Keeping up with the Vinsmokes
by Astrasia
Summary: There are rumours going around about that family again. You know the one. With the curly eyebrows? The family that used to rule the North Blue? No? Well then, it seems as if I'm going to have to tell you all about them. (Rating subject to change)
1. A whole new world

Re-uploaded and beta'd with Seregunda's permission! I was enjoying the story too much to let it go, so when Seregunda dropped it I asked to take it over and give it a few tweaks. First few chapters will mostly be the same as the original, with some editing work done.

* * *

The Vinsmoke Family's naming convention followed a simple pattern. A number, the letter j, and finished with a vowel. As unimaginative as a family of assassins tended to be regarding life outside of murder, these numbers reflected the age of the children. Reiju, the eldest child and first daughter, was the first born. Ichiji, the eldest son. Niji, the second son. Sanji, the third son. Yonji, the fourth son.

But there was one instance in time where this naming pattern wasn't quite followed to the usual 't'. Born several moments after Yonji, and the Vinsmoke patriarch, Jajji, not having been expecting a final child in the first place, the name was so chosen. Mataji Vinsmoke. The fifth Vinsmoke born that day.

Mataji Vinsmoke who remembered things that had never happened.

A woman she called 'Mum' who seemed much kinder than her own mother, a gruff father, a small fluffy dog with a perpetually stupid expression, one brother, one sister, machines that flew through the sky carrying hundreds of passengers, men who walked on the moon, gadgets that allowed instant communication between friends despite being separated by thousands of miles.

The information in her head was fuzzy, but it was there.

Mataji had made the mistake of mentioning these imaginings to her siblings once when she was seven. Yonji, being the youngest, and Reiju, being kinder than the others, were the only ones not to laugh.

Each of the Vinsmoke siblings looked invariably similar, and these similarities were not restricted simply to their colour palette. While they each had the same shade of vibrant blonde hair, blue eyes, and oddly curling eyebrows, their facial architecture was remarkably alike. However while each of the other siblings had eyebrows that curled asymmetrically in an anticlockwise direction, both Sanji and Mataji's both curled clockwise.

"Sanji, do you know why father wants to see us? We didn't do anything, did we?" Mataji lamented, dragging her feet several paces behind her brother who was stalking the corridors at a needlessly brisk pace. It wasn't as if either of them actually wanted to see their father, so Mataji wasn't entirely certain why Sanji seemed desperate to get there.

"No. We just need to get it over with." Sanji gritted his teeth, speeding up again and leaving Mataji moping behind him.

"AaaaaaaAAAAAaaaaaAAAAaaah" Mataji groaned loudly, but sped up to join her brother.

Noticing this, Sanji grinned, dropped his shoulder, and checked her into the wall.

"OOOF! Hey that's not fair! Reiju says you're not supposed to hit girls, Sanji!" Mataji picked herself up off the floor and hurled herself after her brother down the hall, but at this point he had too much of a head start and was cackling wildly as he ran.

"I don't see any girls here!" He called back, powering forward and leading them both more quickly to their father's location as he had wanted.

Within minutes, they both arrived at the door. Overly ornate, as everything in this family seemed to be. From the cutlery, to the drapes, to their curly eyebrows that Mataji swore she would pluck to within an inch of their life as soon as she got her hands on a pair of tweezers. For all their faults, and there were many of those, the Vinsmoke family knew what comfort was. Maybe not good taste, as in Mataji's opinion it was all a bit too gaudy.

Again, the words Reiju said in response to Mataji's possibly manic ravings rang true through her mind, calming her effectively as she and Sanji's chests heaved and they gathered themselves.

"We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting our history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. Does it really matter?"

Of course, the eldest sibling probably regretted her words instantly as it had resulted in a stream of questions from Sanji about what a sex addict was. Mataji knew, the recesses of her mind whispered the meaning to her, but once again she was quite unsure where the information came from as she had yet to come across it in her lifetime. How Reiju knew what it was at their tender age, Mataji didn't want to know.

"Well, we're here now." Mataji sighed, noticing Sanji's shaking frame as he attempted to muster up the courage to open the door. Jajji had always had more cruelty for Sanji than any of the other siblings. Ever since they began the strict training regime that each of the siblings were expected to compete in. Only Sanji lagged far behind.

She pushed past him, grabbing the handle and twisting it thoughtlessly. After all, the fear of the suffering was always worse than the suffering itself in this case. Whatever else about the man, Jajji was still their father. Killing a pair of eight year olds would be highly unlikely.

Probably.

"Father, we have come as requested." Mataji bowed as she spoke, wiping any distaste she felt for her father off her face and out of her tone and ignoring the other occupants of the room. Sanji bowed stiffly beside her, looking every inch the frightened boy of eight that he was.

As Mataji allowed herself to slip into a standing position, she scanned the man and woman on their knees before her father in front of the burning fireplace quickly before flickering her blue eyes back to his. They were both wearing bomb collars.

Jajji Vinsmoke was a large, hulking man with an equally intimidating presence. His light hair was more reminiscent of Mataji's than anyone else's in the family, long, tufted, tangled, and hanging loose to his waist. Under his sharp nose, a long and thin moustache spiked upward, accompanied by a thin and small beard, and a prominent cleft chin.

"I see."

Mataji waited through the pause that she had known was coming. Her father knew how to intimidate people. He was trying to unnerve the two slaves kneeling before him by speaking to his own children in the same barking tone he used on everyone.

Mataji doubted the two were even taking it in at this point. Blood was running from their scalps into the carpet, which was already maroon for this purpose, indicating that they had been dragged to the room by their hair by the guards. A long gash was visible running down the woman's left leg, which would probably be permanently debilitated.

The man's unfocused eyes indicated a strong concussion, but those beady flint-like eyes were still attempting to track all the figures in the room.

Mataji allowed her eyes to rest on the bomb collars once again. The bomb collar is a device strapped around the neck of slaves. They are connected to a chain, which, if broken, will cause the collar to explode, strong enough to cause severe burns on the victim. Their purpose is to prevent slaves from attempting to escape, and only the key can unlock them. Although it is said that certain highly skilled individuals have had the ability to unlock them.

"Father, forgive me, but I was under the impression that we were not to bring our slaves from Sabaody to the North Blue." Mataji spoke evenly, tearing her eyes away from the pair who were staring at the two children with an emotion she could not pinpoint.

"Has Reiju made either of the two of you aware of the current state of the North Blue?" Jajji's deep baritone cut the air, and Mataji fell silent. Apparently he was ignoring her question.

"No, father." She and Sanji chorused simultaneously.

"Our foothold is weakening yet again. Within the year, I see our need to once again take to the seas as Germa 66 once more. For this purpose, I will be sending both of you and Yonji ahead to stay with relatives. Yonji has already been placed in the care of one of the harbourmasters, ready to leave with the new tide for the East Blue to stay with your cousins." Mataji kept her mouth shut with great difficulty.

Why her father deemed it necessary to send their younger brother away without any family to support him she would probably never understand.

And she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of her curiosity.

"You will both leave in eight months. The true danger will not have taken hold by then, but you are both old enough to see it. Your elder siblings will stay with me, until we are ready to leave. As the future of the Vinsmoke family, you will see worse. Do worse. Your mind must be strong before your body will be." Mataji allowed her father's cold words to wash over her, eyes flicking once more to the two slaves bleeding out on the floor before flicking her eyes back to her father's again. She was beginning to understand, and she hated herself for it.

In her father's mind, the minutes between each of the quintuplets' births was gargantuan.

Sanji was too young for this. She probably was too, but she had years of pseudo-memories crammed into her head. Reality or insanity, they allowed her a mature outlook on life that Sanji had yet to grasp.

Jajji's eyes were arctic, even by the standards of the North Blue.

And Mataji could hear the words he barked at Sanji regularly in her mind. A dud. A failure. Too weak to uphold the good name of the Vinsmoke family.

For the first time, Mataji noticed the poker burning hot in the fire. The Hoof of the Soaring Dragon was crudely cut into the overheating slab of metal. The mark of slavery in Sabaody Archipelago.

"These two are to be your companions on this trip. Kenji here-" With these words the Vinsmoke patriarch pressed his cold iron ring into the small of the male slave's back, causing shivers of pain to wrack the man's body. Apparently there were more injuries on his back not visible to the twins' position.

"-was a pirate. He can be a shield for your journey. Ai shall be tasked with non-protective duties. These slaves are to be yours and yours alone, from this point onwards. Do you understand?" Jajji Vinsmoke plucked the branding iron from the fire delicately and held it between his thumb and forefinger by the cool handle.

"I understand." Mataji spoke quickly, not entirely trusting what would come out of Sanji's outraged mouth.

Her brother would neither want to leave the family, nor do what their father was about to ask of them.

Of only her, if she got her way.

Sanji was seething quietly beside her, but at least he was still quiet. His elegant fingers were flexing and clenching repeatedly, and she could hear his teeth grinding.

Sanji was kinder than she was, and younger in soul. He was sensitive. And sensitive people are the most genuine and honest people you will ever meet. He had cried for days when their mother had taken ill. He was the only one of the Vinsmoke siblings who consistently visited her in hospital.

Mataji was going to keep him that way if she could, he had been by her side for every moment of her life so far. Without him, her tether to sanity may start to fray.

Especially with the Vinsmoke patriarch breathing down her neck. After all, the only reason he had yet to start on her, was because Sanji was even weaker.

Jajji roughly grabbed both slaves by the hair, yanking viciously until their backs faced the children. Mataji had been right, their backs were flayed and bloody. That was visible even through the identical roughly-spun brown cotton shirts they both wore.

Mataji edged forward, partially blocking Sanji from her father's view.

Lord Vinsmoke plucked the jewelled dagger out of the holster he kept at his hip. With careful precision, the cloth was cut out of the back of the slaves' shirts and peeled off their raw backs.

Ai screamed in pain, but Kenji barely grunted. His hulking body didn't even tremble.

"Mataji, you first." Jajji held the red hot poker out to the younger twin, who withheld a shudder.

Mataji slipped her fingers around the grip her father had on the handle, feeling the weight slip into her fingers as he let go.

She had seen the Hoof of the Soaring Dragon burned into the backs of slaves before, she knew what her father expected her to do.

Sanji may not.

Mataji inhaled shakily and lunged forward, pressing the poker hard against the abused skin of the female slave whose voice immediately erupted into an eardrum-rupturing scream. Her father held the woman in place by her hair as she thrashed to get away while Mataji held the poker to the woman's skin for as long as was necessary.

Mataji forced the rising bile in her throat down, trying to keep a straight expression as the woman thrashed violently to get away and the smell of burning flesh reached her nose. It smelled disturbingly of pork.

Mataji wrenched the poker away as soon as her father gave a nod, overcome at last and gasping for breath as sweat dripped down her brow. Whatever memories she had or didn't have, she was fairly sure she had never done anything remotely similar to what she had just done to that woman before.

"Sa-" Jajji began to call Sanji's name, and Mataji reacted instantly.

She thrust the poker against Kenji's back before her father could finish calling Sanji's name to come forward.

The ex-pirate jerked forward with a loud grunt before stilling, his body trembling but not thrashing the same way that Ai's had.

Their father watched passively, loosening his hold on the man's hair and watching as pain wracked his body without much fuss.

After a few moments, he switched his focus to his daughter with mildly irritated eyes.

Mataji would never allow Sanji to participate in this. Even if she had to do it all. There were mere months between the siblings and their departure for the East Blue. She could keep Sanji away from their father until then. She had to.

Mataji wrenched the poker off Kenji's back and panted heavily, the smell of burning flesh now clung to their air and the only sound to be heard was her heavy breathing mingling with that of the slaves'.

"I was going to ask the second slave's imprinting of Sanji." The words were amicable, but their father's tone was anything but.

"Were you? I was too excited to do it again, I couldn't possibly wait." Mataji grunted, aware that her words weren't enough to fool Sanji, let alone her father who was an expert in these things.

"Oh?" He motioned for her to continue, Mataji struggled for words.

"Our comfort and sustenance comes from suffering, of all kinds." Mataji said slowly, watching her father's eyes dance with every word of her answer. "If we were to look at our family's history now, it would be a horror story. But it's our family." Mataji wondered herself whether she was lying or not. She had been living in this family for a long time, and she enjoyed the company of some of them.

Her father looked so deep into Mataji's being that she felt sure he'd see the truth. But she lied too well now. She was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything she'd ever done...She wanted him to find no good in her, and he didn't. It felt like there wasn't any now.

"Hm. Have the other servants take those two away. In three days they will be expected to serve as your personal slaves. If they step out of line, ignite the collar. If they refuse to work as they should, ignite the collar. If they are incapable of working at the level expected of them, ignite the collar."

Mataji levelled her gaze at somewhere around her father's left shoulder, trying hard to ignore the scent of burning flesh in the air and Sanji's accusatory gaze. As naïve as he could be, he probably believed she had done it for pleasure.

The siblings bowed deeply and backed out of the room.

The two slaves remained wracked with pain on the floor before Jajji as they dashed from the room with their metaphorical tails between their legs. It was only when they had been running for ten minutes through that enormous mansion that Mataji was overcome.

The entire contents of her stomach were reintroduced to the world again, via the hallway window into the rose bush.

"You shouldn't have done it twice then." Sanji hadn't kept running as he probably should have done.

"No, I shouldn't." Mataji croaked, wiping the corner of her mouth while hanging uselessly over the window sill. With her mouth tasting of bile and her nose still remembering the smell of burning flesh, it would be a wonder if she could ever bring herself to enjoy a meal again.

When Mataji turned around again she was faced with Sanji's scrunched up face. He didn't get it at all. Good. He wouldn't let her protect him if he knew about it.

"Well, we'd better start figuring out what to do when we leave for our cousins' place. Do you even know who they are?" Mataji mused aloud, changing the subject before Sanji could dwell too much on it.

"Um… No. I didn't know we had family outside the North Blue. We should check the family log after lunch." Sanji tugged his fringe thoughtfully while turning on his heel toward the dining room.

He always had this odd internal clock for whenever it was time for a meal.

There was no distracting Sanji from food.

"…Eh I think I'll pass on food for now. Big breakfast. I'll go get a head start on the log, catch up later?" Mataji hid her wince as Sanji shrugged and sprinted off to the dining room.

Her appetite wouldn't be returning any time soon, might as well make herself useful.

Mataji padded softly down the hall, sinking into the plush red carpet with every step. When she had been younger, and still trying to wrap her head around the second set of memories lodged in her infantile mind, she spent hours wandering the halls barefoot and feeling the ridiculously rich carpet between her toes.

Not for the first time, Mataji wondered if she was just crazy. Insane. Nuts.

Sanji acted his age, so did Yonji. Ichiji. Niiji. Only Mataji didn't enjoy playing, incapable of visiting the same imaginary lands as her brothers with the same level of enjoyment.

Sometimes she felt left out, but it didn't bother her as much as it might have another child her age.

"My strange little sister, I hear you have a mean streak almost as wide as our dear father's." Reiju's melodic voice chimed from a doorway as Mataji stalked past, still too engrossed in the spongy feel of the carpet to be taking in her surroundings.

Mataji didn't manage to suppress her jump at the unexpected voice.

"Only way you'd even know that is if you were listening at the door. Sanji hadn't time to tell you." There was no pretending not to have been startled by Reiju at this point, but Mataji clenched her teeth all the same.

She genuinely loved her elder sister, but Reiju was a bit too observant regarding Mataji's… eccentricities. The Vinsmoke siblings reacted so poorly to Mataji's first explanation of what her memories had jumbled into, that she decided never to bother trying again.

There wasn't any point anyway, when the only thing those memories really gave her was a more mature attitude overall.

"It is, isn't it?" Reiju was examining her perfect fingernails as she leant heavily against the wall, all the while looking more put together than Mataji ever would.

Mataji frowned as she kept walking. Loving her sister and feeling at ease with her were two drastically different things. At the end of the day, Reiju was already a fully trained assassin, while Mataji had yet to even master the basics. Being wary of her was common sense.

If Reiju decided it was time for Mataji, Sanji or Yonji to have a permanent nap there was nothing the youngest children would be able to do about it. Only Ichiji could fight on par with her, although Niji could probably manage to do well enough to escape.

"Well, I'm not going to tell Sanji." Reiju began and Mataji froze, not having considered the possibility that of course Reiju _could_ tell her brother about her protecting him.

"But what are you going to do when you two begin your proper training over in the East Blue? You can't protect him all the time, and you certainly won't be able to slit a man's throat in his place when you are on a different mission on a different continent in the years to come. How often have you seen me leave on a mission with male company?" Reiju was lecturing now, in a harsher way than she would have Sanji or Yonji. Her strange little sister could always take harsher mental berating than the boys.

"I haven't." Mataji was looking morosely at her own feet.

"That's because we don't get missions together. As a girl, you will be carrying out different kinds of missions to Sanji. Are you old enough to understand what I mean? These missions are the kind that he absolutely can't do, he will not be accompanying you. You will not be able to protect him. Allow him to grow used to this world while it is still safe for him to do so." Reiju watched as a sudden realisation dawned on her younger sister's face.

Somehow, the eight year old girl before her knew what she would be expected to do with her body to make a hit. Before training. An unusual child indeed.

"Maa, I'm sure you'll get used to the idea. Just make sure it's before you leave for the East Blue." Reiju pushed herself delicately from the wall and began walking in the opposite direction.

"See you, I've got a hit to make."

Reiju made sure to put an extra swing in her hips as she walked away, enough to be sure her younger sister got the point as she rounded the corner. Her little siblings were so stupid and cute, it made her want to tease them all the more. She didn't have to tell them that technically she herself was some years away from being old enough for those missions herself.

 _'Something needs to be done. Something….'_ Mataji thought frantically as she strode through the hallway, no longer focussing on the feel of the carpet beneath her feet as she moved quickly through her home, as if on autopilot, to the library where the log was kept.

There was no way that sweet Sanji was going to be brought into this world and survive. At least, not as Sanji.

Mataji needed him. He was her lifeline. Everything else in this crazy world she was faced with, slaves and pirates and magic fruit and enormous oceans seemed much more manageable with him by her side.

First things first, Mataji was going to need to figure out who their relative in the East Blue was, when they were leaving, and what ship they were leaving on. The rest, hopefully, would come to her as she went.


	2. Heigh Ho

Re-uploaded and beta'd with Seregunda's permission! I was enjoying the story too much to let it go, so when Seregunda dropped it I asked to take it over and give it a few tweaks. First few chapters will mostly be the same as the original, with some editing work done.

* * *

"Listen carefully, all of you. You are the result of my life's work. The result of the most advanced, progressive scientific breakthroughs and genetic engineering that the world has ever known… Your skills and abilities will not be known by human limitations or boundaries!

When the time comes, nothing in this world will deter you five from your ultimate goal… Each of you will stand at the head of and lead an army consisting only of Germa 66, which shall continue to grow and evolve thanks to the power of science! The blood that courses through each of your veins has been blessed with limitless potential! For that potential to be realised, all that's left for you to do… is train!"

"Yes father!" Each of the Vinsmoke siblings echoed, chest out, feet together, and staring at their imposing father with a mix of fear and awe.

They had trained a little before then, but Mataji knew that this brought the eve of a different kind of training. Something Reiju was already exposed to, if the rather impassive look on her face was anything to go by.

Mataji closed her eyes, DNA helixes and base pairs blurring in her mind with too much information for her current state to handle. Her father's words brought a lot of information back, and it was going to take a while to process it.

* * *

The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things people get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in their heads to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that. The most important things lie too close to wherever their secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure their enemies would love to steal away. And they may make revelations that cost them dearly only to have people look at them in a funny way, not understanding what they've said at all, or why they thought it was so important that they almost cried while they were saying it. That's the worst. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

It was Mataji's eternal problem.

Her initial dislike of violence, lodged in her soul from a previous lifetime of pacifism, was alien here. Not wanting to expose children to more harm than good.

Sarcasm was also something she missed dearly, it wasn't quite so commonplace here. And her siblings often looked at her blankly when it was attempted.

Maybe the difference in language didn't allow for it so clearly?

Whatever it was, Mataji was often left with the feeling of being completely misunderstood and unable to convey what it was that she meant without others trivialising her concerns.

Her need to ensure Sanji would grow up as happily as was possible in this world was not going to be met with receptive ears.

"What're yeh flicking through now?" Kenji's voice was thick with an accent Mataji couldn't identify, and low enough that it sounded as if somebody had rubbed gravel along his vocal chords.

"Old dock records. We're going to be leaving on the Friar's Mistress, so I was checking the usual crew they have checked in on it." Mataji answered easily, only telling half the truth.

She was checking dock records. But not crew lists.

"Not sure if yer better or worse'n yer girl of a brother." Kenji groaned, picking idly at the edge of his bomb collar as he leaned back against the wall of the library without even a wince. It had been over two months since Mataji had burned the Hoof of the Flying Dragon into the man's back, and the skin had since healed.

Jajji had upped the siblings' training schedules since then, in the hopes of having them at an acceptable standard of strength by the time they had to leave. Mataji had improved enough to escape the stern gaze and acidic tongue of their father. Sanji had not.

"Sanji is a better person than I am. It's good that Ai keeps him so busy too." Mataji murmured as she ran her finger along a list of the boats that usually docked two weeks from now when their departure date was set.

"Somethin's wrong with the kid." Kenji ploughed on, picking his teeth as he spoke.

"Liking to bake and cook does not mean something is wrong with him." Sanji had even taken to bringing their mother food in the hospital, and from what Mataji was hearing the woman refused to eat anything else. It took Sanji a week to stop crying when she died.

"Does when he can't do it for shit."

The corner of Mataji's mouth twitched but she couldn't argue with the ex-pirate's logic. Sanji, at his young age, was understandably terrible at making use of the kitchen. And Ai could only salvage so much of whatever he created.

Rock hard cupcakes coupled with beautiful icing, too-salty caramel layered with perfectly tempered chocolate, and curdled custard with painstakingly crafted ice-cream were just some of the creations that had been placed before Mataji and Kenji these past few months.

Out of the two slaves, it was probably initially intended for Ai to spend time with Mataji, and Kenji with Sanji. But Ai's face filled with hatred every time Mataji came into view, she hadn't been able to come to terms with Mataji burning the Hoof of the Soaring Dragon into her back.

Kenji was wary of her at first, as every slave was right to be with a new master. But as one month turned to two and Mataji had yet to punish the man for anything, he became more relaxed.

It was hard to tell whether he actually liked her or not, but it was clear that he didn't hold the same grudge that the civilian girl held.

"Well, be careful what you say about Sanji or I might start to take an interest in cooking too. Or sewing. Or art." Mataji teased as she removed two more ships from the list of compatibilities.

"Hmph. Yeh don't act like yer age." Kenji's dark angular eyes were surveying the blonde haired girl before him with something akin to suspicion.

"Yeah, I'm secretly just a forty year old midget." Mataji's voice was deadpan as she responded, crossing another ship off.

"Yarharharhar! Yer a weird kid!" Kenji tossed his head back, his odd barking laugh jarring to the ear.

Everything about the man was jarring, really. His long black hair ran down his back in stiff, spiky tufts. His eyes were slanted, narrow, and dark. His arms were lean and looked slightly too long for his body, and his shoulders a bit too wide to match the rest of his torso. Disjointed and angular.

"You are a weird man." Mataji responded simply, looking with pride at the product of two months' work that she held in her hands.

It had taken ages to acquire records of every ship's arrival, departure, crew members, cargo, and purpose of visit in order to come up with this single result.

"Hey Mataji, we brought cake!" Sanji's exuberant voice echoed from the hall as the handle of the library door jiggled awkwardly before finally creaking open. Mataji's stomach clenched as she caught the movement, the more difficulty he had opening the door the more he had in his hands to prevent it.

"Why?" Kenji grunted loudly, causing the smile to drop from Sanji's face as soon as he walked into the room with Ai several paces behind him.

"Don't listen to him, he's just complaining because I've been spending a lot of time in the library lately. So, what do you have there?" Mataji asked accommodatingly.

"What are you doing in here all the time anyway? You're getting so boring!" Sanji whined, placing the chocolate cake that had been messily iced and decorated on the table before them. Good, if Sanji just did the icing then the cake itself was probably edible.

"Just trying to look up some stuff about the East Blue and the ship we'll be leaving on. Nothing that important." Mataji smiled softly, unwilling to give a straight answer with Ai standing right there.

Kenji, while not trustworthy, hated their father enough that it probably wouldn't matter if he discovered what Mataji was planning. Not that she'd be telling him, just in case. But Ai… There was no way that woman could find out what she'd been up to.

Sanji was a terrible liar, so it would probably be best not to let him know until the last possible minute.

"This is really good, Sanji! You're getting better and better every day." Mataji said, truthfully this time. While the part Sanji had to play was of a much lower standard than Ai's, it was still true that he was improving.

Although it was fair to say that Mataji's taste buds were more than likely just getting used to awful flavours. The only recipient of Sanji's food who ever seemed truly happy was the little rat that visited Sanji's room. Not incredibly sanitary, but it made Sanji happy to see the rat so happy to eat the food that Mataji never broached the subject.

"S'alright." Kenji chewed thoughtfully watching Ai from across the room who had yet to say anything.

She probably wouldn't. The woman was pretty, in a bland sort of way. She had very little personality to back up the good facial symmetry that she was blessed with, and neither her straight brown hair nor brown eyes were eye catching enough to supplement it in this world of crazy hair colours and body shapes.

A boring girl, with a boring name, who was beginning to show signs of cracking.

Living with and serving a family of assassins was bound to grate down anybody's sanity after a while, and it appeared to be happening to Ai. Her fingers trembled slightly too much, her arm jerked too severely when startled, and her eyes flickered from one side of the room to the other without given reason to.

"Good! I have to be good you know, I'm going to be a chef!" Sanji announced proudly, hands on his hips and a smile as wide as his face would allow.

Mataji could almost feel her heart break for the boy. The closest thing to a normal job anybody in their family had ever held was their great aunt on their father's side, who had grown too old to continue being an assassin and was lucky enough not to be killed on a job. She managed a bar now that doubled as an information exchange point for the occupants of the underworld.

"Oh you are? Then you'll have to get even better than this, you know. I've never seen a restaurant serve food like this." Mataji teased, watching as Sanji's face clammed up in a determined focus.

"Oh! You're right. Ahhhhh, this is so hard! I'm gonna do it though, you watch! Tomorrow's sweets are going to be even better! I'm gonna get so good, even Ichiji won't laugh at me." Sanji exclaimed with a huff, diving out the door of the room with his tray in hand to look for other family members to inflict his cakes on.

"He ain't gonna be a chef. Even I can see that." Kenji said as soon as Ai, trailing behind Sanji by several paces still, closed the door behind them.

"Who knows?" Mataji responded delicately, folding the piece of paper that she had finalised in half and tucking it into her pocket. She'd have to keep an eye on her other siblings. They had taken to bullying Sanji, quite severely, lately. Their father did nothing to help.

"Ya not gonna tell me what yer up to, nah?" Kenji asked, oddly straight-forward for the man.

"No." Mataji hopped off the stool she had been sitting on, smiling up at the slave she had become somewhat fond of during the time they had spent together.

"Shall we leave for the docks? I feel like watching the sea gulls." Mataji stuffed her hands in her pockets and started walking, not liking the feel of the much taller man looking behind her.

Mataji was in fact tall for her age, she was two inches taller than her brothers despite the fact that they were the same age, but she doubted that she would ever be as tall as Kenji. He was easily six foot seven or eight.

"Ya don't even like birds." Kenji grumbled as he loped along next to her, clearly bothered now that he couldn't figure out what the girl was up to despite being at her side for every minute of the day for the past few months.

Mataji couldn't help the smile that tugged up at the corner of her mouth. But she stayed quiet.

The Vinsmoke Family resided on the main ship of Germa 66, and was currently docked at a village that lay on the sunset side of an island, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes Sabaody and sometimes Loguetown, apparently under the impression that the two places were identical. It was described with some justice as an artistic colony, though it never in any definable way produced any art. But although its pretensions to be an intellectual centre were a little vague, its pretensions to be a dangerous place were quite indisputable. Largely due to the family of underworld assassins that chose the island as their current home.

As Mataji and Kenji walked down the uneven cobblestone surface, she mused over the vague plans that she had been actively forming for weeks.

Neither Sanji nor Mataji had actually seen their father in three weeks, he had become taken over with the affairs of the North Blue. Constant debates and power struggles for the North Blue were taking up his time, meaning that there was no possible way for him to see them off when they finally leave.

Meaning the plan was several times more likely to succeed.

Kenji began humming as they entered the village that lay at the bottom of the hill. It was a ditty he was particularly fond of, Mataji had heard him repeat it several times before.

"What's that song?" She asked curiously, clasping her hands behind her back as they moved further into the town.

While none of the villagers were aware of who Mataji was, as neither herself or Sanji were allowed to frequent the village by themselves until recently, her appearance undeniably identified her as a member of the Vinsmoke family and allowed for most of the crowd to part and give herself and Kenji a clear path to the docks.

"What're ya up to?" Kenji replied, a smirk beginning to pull at the corner of his mouth.

"It's not _that_ important a song." Mataji sighed, rolling her eyes as she side stepped a particularly slow villager who had yet to notice their presence behind him.

"Ya don't know that." Kenji teased, picking his teeth free of sprinkles from Sanji's cake.

"It's a song. They're never that important." Mataji laughed easily, coming to a stop before the dockmaster's cabin.

"Fer a gal who spends all 'er time in the library, ya don't have much time fer arts." Kenji noted aloud, his brow furrowing in confusion.

Mataji hummed in acquiesce, pressing her hand against the rusted doorknob and pausing before turning thoughtfully to Kenji.

"Wait outside for me. At the window, if you're worried about following father's orders. Come through if you see anything… Inappropriate." Mataji chose her words carefully, and with a wry smile she scanned Kenji's face who was scowling heavily.

He had clearly been looking forward to knowing what she had been working on.

"Stop with the face, you'll get it soon enough." Mataji waved the man off dismissively, sliding the door open easily and standing in the entryway.

"I'll be out in a short while." Mataji shut the door in the slave's face, ensuring to keep her own back to the window as she walked in. There was no way that she would allow for Kenji to read her lips if it was within his abilities.

The dockmaster, a stocky man in his late fifties with a wiry grey handlebar moustache, was sitting grimly before several stacks of yellow-white dock records.

"Well, little miss, let's see what it is I can do for you."

* * *

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something _inside_ of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and _you_ will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.

Mataji felt as if she had already traversed the depths of one storm, whatever the intricate details of her previous life may have held. Adjusting to life here, coming to love her new family as difficult as they made it to do so sometimes, everything was setting her up for an entirely new storm.

"Mataji, caramel slices!" Sanji burst into the library, where Mataji was still holed up with Kenji. However now, she had enlisted the slave to help her learn various skills rather than going through dock records.

At the moment, he was running her through the different knots used in mainsails.

Some were coming quicker than others, leading Mataji to the conclusion that at some point she had known how to tie a few of them.

"Oh, this looks really good Sanji!" Mataji allowed surprise to leak into her voice, plucking one of the treats off the plate eagerly.

"Don't look like shit." Kenji added, shuffling forward with obvious interest.

Ai was drifting in the background, watching the platter more closely than she had bothered to in the months that she had been cooking with Sanji.

"Yeah, they're really good! I ate one earlier while they were cooling." Sanji announced proudly, pushing the tray towards Kenji with pride.

"Are you alright? You look shocked all of a sudden, Ai." Mataji, who had been watching Ai suspiciously, carefully placed the caramel slice back down on the tray.

"I-I-I'm…. What?" Ai's fingers were trembling as she crossed her arms across her chest protectively.

She kept glancing at Sanji.

"Wha's in da food, ya whore?!" Kenji didn't keep his cool as well as Mataji did, slamming his slice down on the table. Disjointedly, Mataji noticed it crumbling to pieces beneath his fist.

As Kenji's voice rose in the background, Mataji focused on her brother.

"Sanji, you look pale, and there shouldn't be this much sweat on your forehead, it's not that warm. How do you feel?" Mataji pressed her left hand to Sanji's forehead, and her right to her own. He was burning up.

"Not so good… I thought that was just because it was warm in the kitchen?" Sanji looked shaky on his feet, only now identifying the feeling of poison rushing through his veins. Despite all appearances and personality, Sanji was still born into a family of assassins. Mataji knew that he had heard enough about poison to identify the feeling. They had been poisoned mildly during assassin's training often enough too.

"KENJI!" Mataji bellowed, her usually quiet voice barking even over the rowdier pirate's. The man paused unwillingly, and Mataji was willing to bet that had there not been a bomb collar strapped to the man's neck there was no way he would have stopped.

"He… He, ha-HA-ha-HA!" Peals of laughter erupted from Ai, lilting and cracking with hints of insanity. Sounds that may have been intended to be words broke through the cacophony, but nothing solid enough to make sense of.

"Kenji, take her to my father. I don't care if he doesn't want to listen, MAKE him. I don't care if he threatens you with the bomb collar, if Sanji dies because father did not hear of this soon enough I promise you, you'll die one way or another. He'll make her talk." Mataji ordered, eyes flashing cold as she gave her first authoritive order to Kenji.

With her words, Mataji saw the first true rivulets of anger drip into Kenji's gaze, but he took a tight grip of the manic Ai and pressed her arms tight against her sides.

"Righ'." His response was short, but he began moving quickly enough after.

"Kenji, I'll be taking Sanji back to his room. Make sure you tell father!" Mataji called after her slave, cursing inwardly at the way she chose to phrase her request but it was too late now. The longer Sanji stood, the worse he looked.

"I… It won't be that bad will it? I mean, she's not an assassin. She's not anything!" Sanji tittered, beginning to show the first vestiges of panic.

"Hey now, calm down. There's no way she understands enough about poison to get one of the Vinsmokes, right? Now stay relaxed, or whatever she pumped into you will just go through you quicker. You'll probably just get some really bad diarrhoea." Mataji teased, forcing all traces of her worry out of her voice as Sanji glared half-heartedly.

Being so young, he was truly assuaged by her words.

"Now, let's get you back to your room, hey? To get this out of your system. Father will know what to do." Mataji hoisted her brother's arm over her shoulder, cursing her inability to actually do anything.

Because for all that anything counted for anything anymore, Ai might have poisoned Sanji beyond helping. Ai might have gotten her revenge on Mataji ten times over with what she had inadvertently done. Sanji rarely ate anything before presenting his food to Mataji and Kenji, too excited to see their reactions to sample the finished product as a chef was supposed to do.

If that poison had been in place any other day… Then it would be Mataji with her face scrunched in ever-increasing pain. And Sanji might not have had the foresight to call for their father either.

"You're going to be fine." Mataji reassured both Sanji and herself as they started walking down the halls.

"Do you know why?"

Sanji shook his head, and Mataji began preparing what she wanted to say.

"Because you have too many things to do, too many people to meet. You're going to meet lots of people with loud personalities: obnoxious people that scream and shout are a total waste of space. Predators. Anything that is happy and at peace they mistake for weakness. It's your job to show them that your peace and gentleness are not the same as weakness.

The others always thought you were fragile and delicate but the thing is, you are not fragile and you are not delicate. You are very gentle but that the gentle also possesses a poison. You're like silk! People think silk is weak but did you know a silk handkerchief can protect you from a gunshot? Predators want to have friends that they can dominate over because that makes them feel strong and important. Predators have no strength and no courage. It is you who are strong, and it is you who are brave. There are many more predators in this world, so I want you to be made of silk. You are silk." Mataji was talking as much to herself as she was to Sanji, who at this point was barely conscious.

Mataji rambled as they walked the halls. With every step, her tone got more frantic and Sanji leaned a little bit more weight on her shoulder.

By the time Mataji got her little brother into his bed, his breaths were wheezing, his face pink, and sweat glistened on his brow. His unfocused eyes were possibly the most disturbing thing that Mataji couldn't move past.

"Mataji! Father wants to see you, this is Doctor Sven, he'll be treating Sanji. Symptoms, now!" Reiju swept into the room, a possibly kidnapped frail elderly man being pulled into the room behind her.

"Oh! Erm… Dilated pupils, I think he's sensitive to light too, couldn't look at the windows when we walked through the hall. No balance, I had to carry him most of the way. He's really hot too, I think a rash is starting at his neck, and he's not speaking very clearly. I don't know if that's because he's confused or slurring though." Mataji recited quickly, knowing that what little she picked up regarding symptoms are common to several poisons and will not be of much use overall.

"Can't I stay? Please? I don't want to leave him." Mataji begged, wringing her hands in front of herself and staring right into her older sister's face.

In the current situation, even Mataji could see Reiju's reluctance to send her younger sister to see Jajji.

"No, you will only get in the way here. Go help our father in his chambers, he is trying to get enough information in order to identify how to help Sanji. This will be of more use than anything you could do here. I'm getting pretty good with poisons too you know, I'll stay and help." Reiju ordered, placing both hands on Mataji's shoulders and pressing gently.

Mataji didn't bother saying that there was no way she would be of any use to her father either. She didn't know anything, the poison had gotten into Sanji's system before she had seen anything.

Mataji hurried all the same though, down the lavish halls of their home towards Jajji's chambers where she assumed Kenji had found him.

In her rush to get back to her ailing brother, Mataji almost forgot to knock on the door.

Almost.

"Mataji, come in." Jajji's deep voice cut through the air, and Mataji hesitated for only a split second before walking through the door.

Mataji's eyes skimmed over Kenji, who looked only mildly ill, and her father, who was covered in blood that wasn't his, to rest on Ai who was writhing on the floor covered in the same blood that coated her father, and making more of it as it oozed over the floor.

Ai's voice cracked periodically, between attempts to scream. Apparently her vocal chords were damaged from the screaming she had already done before the young girl walked into the room.

Mataji wondered briefly if she should feel sorry for the woman, but thinking of Sanji's quaking form confined to his bed settled matters. Whether Mataji was supposed to feel sorry for Ai in this situation or not, the fact remained that she wasn't going to.

"Father, Reiju asked me to come see you?" Mataji cleared her throat before speaking, knowing that her cool gaze matched her father's wasn't bothering her as much as the thought would have in any other situation.

Of all of the Vinsmoke children, despite the strong Vinsmoke genetics running through each of them, it was Mataji who looked most like their father.

And now, with Sanji maybe dying in the same building and her not being able to help, the expression that Mataji wore made it look almost as if her father's cloning experiments were a bit too successful.

"You responded well. Your slave made it here faster than you may have hoped, perhaps a future in training might be in order?" This wasn't good, her father wasn't nearly as worried looking as he would have been had this happened to herself or any of the other siblings.

"Perhaps, father. Although I fear he may just be particularly… Resilient." Mataji allowed the word to hang in the air dangerously, allowing Jajji to make any assumptions he liked. If he wanted to assume that Mataji was tormenting Kenji, he was more than welcome to as long as Sanji survived.

"I worried when Sanji first began showing signs of weakness that, being so close, you would be the same. I can see our efforts were more successful here than not." It was as close to praise as Jajji was going to give.

"I only wish to be more useful to the family, Father." Mataji answered stiffly, bowing in increments before straightening up. She could tell that Jajji was dawdling, trying to take as much time to get to the point as he could to make her uncomfortable. Whether he favoured her or not didn't matter, he thrived off making people uncomfortable.

"Hm. I am sure that both you and Sanji understand the circumstances of your birth as I explained it, yes?" Mataji froze as Jajji wound his moustache around his finger, deliberating how to answer without frustrating the man.

"I believe I am, but I have not elaborated on it for Sanji." Mataji admitted, knowing the topic would have been a sore one for her brother and deciding it wasn't important enough for him to need to know the small details.

"Oh? And how is it you know? I seem to recall an oath of silence being in place for those experiments." Jajji asked, leaning back and examining his daughter carefully. Testing her, again.

"The files are in the library." Mataji answered shortly, ignoring Kenji's curious gaze burning a hole in her back.

"So they are. You _do_ spend a lot of time in there. My only child to inherit my… curiosity." Jajji spoke slowly, eyes flicking over her form once more with a frown.

"Your strength is far less than your elder siblings, and only slightly ahead of Yonji's. Sanji's pales in comparison to all of you. A disgrace to the family." Jajji was staring Mataji down now, daring her to speak. She loved her brother, but not to the point of stupidity. She remained silent.

"Do you know why I brought you here?" Jajji asked suddenly, leaning forward. Mataji hesitated.

"Reiju said it was because you wanted more information about how Sanji was poisoned." Mataji spoke slowly, brow furrowing as she realised the implausibility of that statement.

There was no information she could give to her father that would be of any further use than what the doctor already knew.

"No." Jajji said lowly but remaining silent as he watched his youngest daughter, apparently realising that she knew her information was wrong.

Mataji's mind rushed through the options, trying desperately to come to a conclusion- anything at all. What had her father always said about her?

"You're going to teach me." Mataji whispered, not sure herself whether it was in horror or awe. Her mind. Her thrice accursed mind that her father always said was so like his own, it had to be.

"Yes. And that is why." Because she realised it. Knew things. What would happen when her body caught up with her mental age? Would her father notice the plateau? Would she plateau?

"But Sanji-"

"Has a mild case of Belladonna poisoning. Niji found the flowers in her room, she wasn't even well versed enough to use the root. Only the berries." Jajji explained, and the information for Belladonna poisoning rushed to the fore of Mataji's mind. Assassination knowledge from this lifetime, not her last.

 _The root is the most poisonous, the leaves and flowers less so, and the berries, except to children, least of all. It is said that an adult may eat two or three berries without injury, but dangerous symptoms appear if more are taken, and it is wiser not to attempt the experiment._

"Oh." Sanji had been put through more than enough poisoning training that it probably shouldn't have had an effect at all.

"Yes, 'oh'. Tell me what you know about DNA." Jajji settled back in his seat, seeming happy to allow Ai to bleed slowly to death on the floor as Mataji and Kenji watched.

Mataji took a shaky breath in, levelling herself. She remembered sitting in a room with four hundred other students, like her, with a short fat man at the head explaining everything about something called 'molecular biology'. How much information was relative? Was any of it? What if the information didn't translate?

"DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms-" Mataji began, her memory flooding as her mouth moved seemingly on its' own. At one point, she had known this information well.

"It has a double helix structure made of two biopolymer strands-" Mataji grimaced internally as her father's eyes widened in shock, but his face remained neutral. She couldn't think too much on it, or it would be obvious that she was omitting information. And that was more dangerous with her father than knowing too much.

"The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine-" Mataji closed her eyes, pretending they weren't there. In what world did an eight year old know this? None.

More so than her father, she could feel Kenji's eyes burning into her back with a weird intensity. For the first time in a long time, Mataji felt like a freak.

"DNA bases pair up with each other, A with T and C with G, to form units called base pairs. Each base is also attached to a sugar molecule and a phosphate molecule." She should stop now. Why wasn't she stopping?

Mataji had begun recounting the chemical bonds between strands when her father's hoarse voice croaked out the word 'stop'.

Mataji opened her eyes slowly, willing herself not to sink lower into the floor as her father stared hard at her, as if seeing her for the first time.

She didn't like it.

"That information… Is not known to the general populace. It is not in the library. Most inhabitants of the North Blue would not be aware that DNA exists, even fewer of what it is." Jajji began slowly, stroking his moustache which was twitching in agitation.

"As a member of our family, I would have expected you to know that it existed. Considering the genetic manipulation that has taken place here. I have this knowledge. Along with Vegapunk, and possibly Hogback. How _exactly_ does an eight year old child come by this information?" Jajji's voice was rising now. Mataji froze at the sound, it was rare that her father became truly frustrated.

Mataji couldn't even remember the very in-detail aspects of DNA from her class, but if even this small display of knowledge would be useful here…

"I don't know. I just do." Mataji answered, mostly truthfully. She wasn't sure if universities even existed here, and if they did certainly not in the North Blue. The word 'biochemistry' kept floating about in her head.

Jajji stared into Mataji's eyes for several moments before scratching his head and nodding, seemingly satisfied that she wasn't lying.

"Lessons begin tomorrow. If you know something already, speak. If anything comes to mind that may indicate how you came to possess this information, speak. Obviously, the plans to send you and Sanji to live with relatives is not an option now. Leave." Jajji waved Mataji off, who froze uncertainly. The brusque manner in which she was brushed off was the norm for her father, but the tone wasn't.

Mataji motioned for Kenji to follow her all the same, pottering lightly towards the door with the rattled slave in tow.

"Wait." Jajji's voice called uncertainly, and both pairs of feet came to a halt just beside the overly ornate door. Mataji didn't turn around, but stared at the intricate patterning in the panelling that she had long since memorised by staring at whenever she was uncomfortable in her father's presence. Which was often.

"Do not repeat any, _any_ , of what you just told me outside this room. I had thought three being privy to this knowledge was worrying, now there are four. We need no more." There was no room for argument in that tone. Mataji didn't bother to correct him that that number was six including Ai and Kenji. Soon to be five.

Mataji nodded, before remembering that she was facing the wrong way and immediately agreed verbally. She stepped out of the room, eager for fresh air.

"Now… Ai, was it? Why don't we-" Mataji slammed the door shut as soon as her father started speaking in _that_ tone to Ai. Mataji had no desire to spare the woman her fate, but did not want to hear it either.

Whatever revenge Mataji could have come up with, her father was going to succeed it several times over before he allowed that woman to die.

"Yer a strange kid." Kenji spoke slowly, standing uneasily at Mataji's side. His too-sharp eyes were focused on her again, and Mataji sometimes felt that despite his lack of academic intelligence he saw more into her than her father ever could with all of his.

"I come from a strange family." Mataji croaked, beginning to walk away as the screams started behind the door. She didn't want to hear it, not if she could help it.

"So do I, don't see me spoutin' off 'bout deoxy-shite." Kenji interrupted, frowning as he slowed his pace and shortened his stride to keep up with the young girl.

"What was it that makes your family so strange then?" Mataji asked amicably, happier the further she moved from her father. The screams grew quieter and she grew closer to Sanji's room.

"Ma's a whore, Da's a pirate." Kenji answered easily, no shame in his voice at the admission as there would have been in many others.

"Which one's the family business?" Mataji grinned to herself before continuing- "Well, you heard what my dad was saying earlier, didn't you?"

"Heard it. Didn't get it."

Mataji paused, trying to think how she was going to explain herself. Technically she didn't have to, but she liked Kenji enough to at least try a bit.

"You don't really have to. Get it, I mean. Before we were born, Father did some… experiments on us. When we were still in Mum. It made us weirder. Except Sanji. He's still normal, still nice. The rest of us are just…"

"Strange?"

"Yeah, that's it. Strange."

The pair walked in silence for a moment, one tall and all limbs, the other shorter but already showing signs of a similar lankiness.

"An' that trainin' he makes ye do?"

"To bring the best out of our genetic… strangeness. Mine kicked in a while back, it's why I'm stronger and faster than most kids my age. I'm still weaker than all my other siblings though."

"'Cept Sanji."

"Yeah. Except Sanji."


	3. I see the Light

Re-uploaded and beta'd with Seregunda's permission! I was enjoying the story too much to let it go, so when Seregunda dropped it I asked to take it over and give it a few tweaks. First few chapters will mostly be the same as the original, with some editing work done.

* * *

Germa 66 (the military branch of the Germa Kingdom, and an Underworld Mercenary Force headed by the Vinsmoke Family) was coming to the forefront of the North Blue conflicts. The past month, Mataji had been spending every day with her father. She was being taught war tactics of armies, and biological manipulations of psychopaths at the same time. All while trying to keep up with her siblings' training. Eventually it was decided that her training would also be separated from theirs, leaving Sanji to fend for himself against his three brothers.

Mataji had asked Reiju to keep an eye on him, she could only hope the older girl was actually complying because there was no way that Sanji would ever tell her.

She was dropping further physically behind all her siblings except Sanji, but her father was growing more and more pleased with her progress.

"What is it that you mean when you speak of atoms? Radiation?" Her father's fingers were laced together as he listened to Mataji with rapt attention as she rattled off what she knew, naming several substances that may or may not exist in this world as examples. Mataji couldn't read Jajji well enough to tell whether or not what she was repeating was common knowledge, specialist knowledge, or entirely undiscovered.

If her father's reactions to her information were anything to judge from, she was giving a significant amount of unknown knowledge if nothing else.

"Your brother's funeral is tomorrow." Jajji interrupted Mataji's monologue suddenly, watching her face for a reaction.

"What?" Mataji tried to keep her expression neutral, she knew that she failed.

"Sanji. He has fallen too far behind your other siblings, and he does not have any other notable talents to make up for it. In fact-" Jajji's upper lip curled, and Mataji shuddered in anticipation of what she could sense coming.

"He has taken to _cooking_. For rats. Has notions of becoming a chef, of all things. No, I am staging his death in a tragic accident. He cannot be allowed to shame the family any further than he already has, but he is still enough my son that permanent removal is… ill advised." Jajji spoke deliberately, stroking his spiked moustache as he regarded his youngest daughter.

"You will be expected to attend the funeral with your siblings, and you will remain far from Sanji's cell. I suspect your spoiling him may have been key to his disgrace." Her father's words were meant to hurt, but his tone suggested that he couldn't care less. Not really. He had enough successful children that one bad one, as long as word doesn't get out, was not enough to deter him.

"Yes, father." Mataji said blankly, trying not to reel with the new information.

"He is being restricted to the dungeon, and is to wear an iron mask. It will be removed only when he is to be fed. When you visit is not an exception."

On one hand, this way Sanji will never have to kill anybody. Never have to take those awful first steps into the world of assassins.

But that was no way to live his life. Mataji would have to keep her plan intact. Or part of it. The bones of her plan would remain the same, but now she was going to need help. Now she was probably going to need Reiju.

* * *

The state funeral was held in front of the onlooking Germa 66 soldiers. It was as extravagant as it would have been had any of Jajji's other children 'died', so for that alone Mataji couldn't fault him.

She and Reiju succeeded in appearing appropriately sad, as did Niji which struck Mataji as odd at first. After all, the fake death of a brother was hardly something to be actually sad about.

It was at the point that Sanji's coffin lid was closed that Mataji clicked that none of her other siblings had been informed of Sanji's survival. Mataji watched the lid slide shut over her brother's fake corpse, her fingernails biting into her thighs with real anger now. It was easy to forget sometimes, with all her father's physical strength, that he was a genius too.

Mataji, of all the Vinsmokes, was the family member most likely to discover Sanji's survival had nobody been told. Jajji must also have suspected that in that situation, Mataji would be more likely to stay silent and free her brother without alerting the other family members to her knowledge. By telling her, should anything happen, Jajji would know exactly who to blame with little need to suspect anybody else.

Mataji gnawed the skin on the knuckle of her thumb distantly, one thought prevailing over all others in her head. How on earth was she going to make sure her siblings openly discovered the secret without putting everything at risk?

Mataji caught Kenji's eye at the edge of the crowd off the platform, she could tell by his furrowed expression that he had figured out most of the situation by now too. She couldn't use him either. There were only two people her father knew Mataji to spend time with, Sanji and 'that slave'. It would be too obvious.

Her siblings, even Reiju, were nowhere near as observant as she or Sanji, it was their failing for all their other qualities. This would be a difficult task.

* * *

In the following months, Mataji learned that there was one massive downside to being the 'weird' one in the family. Nothing she did could make her siblings suspicious of her.

Taking up baking (for all of ten minutes before she got bored) and walking through the hall towards the dungeon – she must just miss Sanji.

Has a 'seizure' and takes off screaming down the hall, coincidentally towards the dungeon – Father must be doing some extra experiments on her with all the time they spend together.

Talks loudly with Kenji about a (made up) case during Gol D. Roger's time where a death was faked – she spends a lot of time in the library.

"Hey Sanji, how are you doing?" Mataji forced her voice to be extra chipper each time she visited her brother, it did no good for them both to be depressed, and Sanji was the type to feed off others' moods anyway.

"Mataji, Mataji! It's been ages!" Sanji cried, running towards the bars of his prison, his home, and clutching them with his tiny fists.

"It hasn't even been twenty four hours Sanji, I visited yesterday." Mataji smiled softly, trying hard to look Sanji in the eye and ignore the hulking metal mask clamped over the boy's head. Of course it would feel like ages to him, he had next to nothing to do.

"Oh, you got a new cookbook?" Mataji asked, spying a book with a soft blue cover lying on a table on the far side of the cell. Her father, for all his hatred of Sanji's pastimes, seemed to have given up on the endeavour to raise Sanji 'respectably'.

"Yeah! I've already read it all, have you ever heard of the All Blue?!" Sanji asked excitedly, dashing back to grab the book and bring it before Mataji's face behind the bars. The page he wanted had been folded down, and easily accessible for the show and tell.

"No, I haven't. What is it?" Mataji said in surprise, not that she had combed through every book in their library or anything, especially not the cookbooks, but not having heard of something at all was unusual for her.

"It's this great big ocean, right? Except it's on the Grand Line! And it's got every single fish in the world in it, can you believe it? It's the best place ever for a chef!" Sanji trilled excitedly, gesturing towards an artist's interpretation of it.

Mataji allowed her eyes to travel over one fantastic beast to another, noting with furrowed brows that not one of them seemed to have photographic evidence.

"Er, Sanji? Where is the One Blue?"

" _All_ Blue. And I don't know, nobody's found it yet. But I'm gonna." Sanji announced proudly, his eyes glittering with delight as he flicked through the pages of one unbelievable picture to the next. The actual words written on the topic were minimal.

Mataji sighed, no sense in depriving him of the only joy he seemed to be getting down here.

"Well, if somebody's going to do it, you have just as much a shot as anybody." There, that wasn't lying either, and by the way the corners of Sanji's eyes were crinkling she could tell that he was beaming at her.

"Oh, your dinner's here." Mataji noted, as a hatch on the opposite side of the cell opened and a dinner tray slid through. She was happy to note that the smells coming from the tray were just as delicious as those that the other Vinsmokes ate themselves. If nothing else, at least her father wasn't starving him or feeding him slop.

"That smells _good_!" Sanji glanced over Mataji's shoulder at the guard who had been watching the entire exchange.

"Can you take off my helmet so I can eat now?" Sanji pleaded, already standing next to the bars with his back to them so the guard could reach the latch.

"Your sister will have to leave before the helmet is removed." The guard intoned uncaringly, clearly not bothered by the cruel rules he had been set to enforce.

"Well there's no sense in waiting for your food to get cold, I'll be back again tomorrow. Love you, Sanji." Mataji said as she climbed the stairs out of the dungeon, hearing his reply called back. She had never said it before his imprisonment, but now she told him she loved him every time she walked away. Mataji wasn't sure if it was fueled by guilt for not figuring a way out of the situation yet or actual emotion.

"Yer bro's alright?" Kenji asked, having been waiting at the top of the stairs. He had clearance to go wherever Mataji went, but after following her down to visit Sanji the first time he never returned. While the cell wasn't exactly the worst of conditions, it was better than most free people would ever see, seeing an eight year old boy behind bars with a thick metal mask clamped over his head was never going to be a pleasant sight. Or at least, that's what Mataji assumed the problem to be.

For all of Kenji's brash talk and huffing, he at least didn't enjoy seeing children suffer.

"As much as he can be." Mataji sighed, exhausted despite that only being a particularly short visit.

"Ya need to figure somethin' out." Kenji pointed out needlessly, picking at some dead skin on his finger as he followed the eight year old girl down the hall. He had long since stopped seeing Mataji as eight.

"I do, don't I?"

* * *

It hadn't been anything that Mataji had done in the end that had tipped her siblings off to Sanji's continued existence.

Ichiji had been stalking the halls, practicing his stealth manoeuvres for their next training session, and had overheard the whispers of servants and maids wondering why an extra high quality meal was being made each day. They, and Ichiji, had assumed it was for a VIP prisoner. Or possibly a new escort of their father's.

Either way while Mataji was working in the lab with Jajji her brother had gathered the rest of their siblings and followed the food tray in their curiosity.

They found Sanji. And their superior strength was more than capable of getting through the bars that held him.

"I don't want to be their next target, do you understand?" Reiju snarled at Mataji, who was glaring at her elder sister with true fury for the first time in years. Certainly for the first time since they started their training.

" _You were there! You were there when they did that to him, and you laughed_!" Mataji hissed, not quite believing what her older sister was capable of. Older? Mataji paused for a second.

Maybe not. How much older was Reiju again? Not much more than a year, two max, despite how the older girl acted. Mataji never remembered these things. So that would make Reiju… probably only ten years old.

Mataji sighed, calming considerably. There was no need for her to expect the world of a ten year old, it would only give them both a headache.

"We're going to be climbing the Red Line next week, right?" Mataji asked sharply, not as angry but still not forgiving Reiju.

"Y-yeah. I mean, yes. We are." Reiju seemed put off by the abrupt change of attitude in Mataji, but seemed willing to ignore it for the sake of the conversation.

"Do me one favour. Just one." Mataji's mind was reeling with possibilities. It was clear, despite Reiju's words, that she felt sorry for him.

"What's the favour?" Being ten didn't change the fact that Reiju grew up in an assassin's family.

"What I'm about to tell you, you aren't to say to anyone else. Nobody. It won't hurt any of our brothers or father, but it might help Sanji." Mataji was taking a chance, but it was the only risk worth taking at this point. If this didn't work, nothing would.

"W-well… I mean, father won't be angry?" Reiju was for once sounding her age, young and unsure.

"If he finds out, not at you." Mataji confirmed with a firm nod, frowning at the widening of Reiju's eyes.

"Sometimes… You look a lot like Father. A lot." Reiju said shakily, tugging at her hair before inhaling and placing her hands on her hips.

"Alright! What is it? I won't promise to help but I promise not to tell!" Reiju's eyes were wrenched shut, despite everything Mataji could tell that her elder sister understood the enormity of the situation.

"When we climb the Red Line and enter the East Blue… We are to attack an island named Cozia. Has father told you this yet?" Mataji asked, biting her cheek when Reiju shook her head with her eyes widened.

"Well, remember to look surprised when he does. We've been docked here a while, right? Did you know that this is the largest port in all the North Blue?" Mataji hadn't until she had been researching old dock records, so it was highly unlikely that Reiju did.

"This port has most of the docking information for all of the ships in the North Blue. And, coincidentally, a significant portion of the East. When we enter Cozia, there will be a ship there that will need a chef's assistant. A glorified dishwasher, really, but I wonder who we both know that would view that as the best job in the whole wide world?" Mataji folded her hands behind her back, staring down at her elder sister, thankful yet again for her superior height she alone inherited from their father.

"But… Why? Why are you telling _me_ this?" Reiju cried, hand pressed to her tiny chest in desperation.

"Because I need the escape to happen while I am with father. He will know it's my fault either way, but as long as I am with him, he can't punish me too severely. He won't know it's you. I'll make sure of it." Mataji reassured her older sister, who was frowning and trembling in confusion.

"Take your time. We have some. Just… visit Sanji, alright? I can't stay very long with my extra training, and he gets lonely down there. Without the three idiots, if possible." Mataji sighed, thinking of her three other brothers who she still loved, for some reason she couldn't understand. Ichiji, who wore those stupid glasses all the time, Niji who was beginning to tote a pair of goggles in imitation, and Yonji who was more or less just following the crowd.

"I will… And I'll try and do it without our brothers." Reiju nodded, seeming happy with the trade off so far.

Good. She was kinder than the rest, Mataji knew that her conscience would win out after seeing her brother in such a state.

Mataji might not have to do very much at all.

"I won't tell you the name of the ship. Not yet. That pressure wouldn't be fair to put on you when you've agreed to nothing." Mataji conceded, quite kindly if she may say so herself. There was nothing stopping her from dropping the full pressure of the situation on her technically-older sister.

"But it's fair to put on you?" Reiju sighed, allowing a puff of breath to ruffle her hair as she tried to look her younger sister dead in the eye in vain. When had Mataji gotten so tall? And started to look so painfully like their father in a way that not even any of the boys managed to?

The youngest sister paused, a characteristically solemn expression passing over her face. The expression Mataji usually got when overthinking what Reiju thought was a simple enough question.

"I think it is. We're different." Mataji said slowly and shrugged, pushing her calloused hands into her pockets. Each of the siblings had equally damaged hands, particularly for their age.

"Hah! That's true. You can't even run with _half_ the weights I can!" Reiju puffed her chest out proudly, suddenly recovered from her momentary insecurities.

Reiju, who had been expecting the same childish outburst that she got from her brothers when she beat them in training, was surprised when Mataji chuckled lowly and scratched the back of her head.

"Yeah. I'll work on that sometime."

Reiju raised an eyebrow at her younger sister, watching as she turned on her heel and walked away. She always got the same distinctive feeling that she was speaking with an adult when coming away from a serious conversation with Mataji.

"I have such a strange little sister, ne~" Reiju smiled softly, and turned abruptly to face the direction of the dungeon with apprehension.

She didn't want to visit her brother. Not when she had already seen him with that big metal mask on his head. It wasn't fair.

But… She wasn't going to break a promise to Mataji.

It only had a little to do with how much Mataji reminded her of their father, especially recently.

* * *

"Yer deoxy-shite isn't as much use's this, is it?" Kenji crowed as he finished showing her how to tie a reef knot.

"Probably not. Hah." Mataji chuckled at her unintended pun, narrowing her eyes while comparing her slightly sloppy work with Kenji's meticulous one. She began again.

"Plan still in the works? Ain't gonna be today? Not while we're climbin' the Red Line?" Kenji's slanted eyes always had a naturally suspicious edge to them. That was doubled by the fact that lately he had actually been very, very suspicious.

He was aware that his charge was planning on getting her little brother out of his prison. When? He didn't know. How? He didn't know.

He didn't blame her for not telling him though. Not really. She knew her father too well. As soon as Mataji said… whatever she had to Reiju, he had gotten a summons to Jajji's office.

Had Mataji given him any information to work with, Kenji would have revealed it under threat of bomb collar. There was no two ways about it. He felt for Sanji, no kid deserved that treatment. But in Kenji's mind he had one life, and there were plenty of chances to free the boy as long as he was alive.

Even Jajji could tell the slave was operating under minimal information, and had allowed him to leave after eleven lashes. One for every minute of Jajji's time that he had wasted.

"I don't know what plan you're talking about."

Of course that didn't stop the lack of information from getting really annoying.

"'Course ya don't." Kenji balanced his head on his knuckles and watched the young girl furrow her brow and try the knot again.

All the Vinsmoke siblings were freakish compared to normal humans their age. But with most of them it revolved around superior physical abilities.

Which all of them bar Sanji seemed to have. Mataji, despite being weaker than Reiju, Ichiji, Niji, and Yonji, was still far stronger than every average child. But she excelled in something her demonic father seemed to value even more than that strength.

It was an area that Kenji would admit he would probably never be able to understand. But even he could tell the knowledge brimming from the girl was shocking.

No matter how intelligent, people don't _just know things_. They might be able to figure stuff out. Might be really fast at learning new things. But people aren't born just knowing things.

Except Mataji.

"What?" Mataji's sharp blue eyes were analysing him, and he shook himself with the realisation that he had been staring blankly at her.

"Nuthin'. Jus' thinkin'." Upon hearing his response, Mataji had opened her mouth a wry grin before an expression flickered behind her eyes and snapping it shut with a click.

"How's this?" Mataji offered the slave the knot for evaluation. Kenji blinked. It was several times better than the last.

"Better." Kenji grunted, reached forward, and untied it.

"Again."

It was three hours before the pair were interrupted. A member of Germa 66 dropped by the library and gave orders to go to the room that had been arranged for each of the siblings except Sanji to spend the ascent.

It was a bare room with a wide bow-facing window complete with gilded railings to hang onto. Kenji eyed the modifications with distaste. The Germa soldiers were freakishly efficient and obedient. Mataji had tried to explain why once, and from what little Kenji could get from it the Vinsmokes grew people like gardeners grow plants.

In a handful of years, the Vinsmokes could grow a fully functional adult male soldier for further use.

The other siblings were already there.

"Hey, Mataji. What you been up to?" Niji bounced towards the youngest but tallest of the siblings eagerly. His eyes were sparkling with curiosity.

"Nothing much. I've been learning different experiments from Father." Mataji answered simply with a soft smile, not bothering to explain much more.

"That is so _cool_ though! How come you get to be smart? It's not fair." Niji lamented, looking to his left for commiseration from the eldest brother.

"Yeah. I mean _all_ of us get to be strong. Even you are pretty strong, sort of, why only you?" Ichiji griped, adjusting his goggles with a frown.

"I don't _get_ to be anything. I just like to read is all. I spend more time in the library than all of you guys put together." Mataji lied, elbowing Kenji in the side as he snorted with laughter.

He didn't think Mataji was stupid, quite the opposite, but there was no pretending that that intelligence was hard won to him.

"But the library is so _boring_!" The two brothers groaned in unison, grinning briefly before punching each other in the shoulder quickly. Frowning when they did that at the same time. Punched each other again. The frown became more deep set. Again.

"Hold on you two, what are you doing?" Mataji sighed, intervening before it became a full-blown brawl right before they were to ascend the Red Line.

"Wetalkedatthesametimeand… LETMEHITYOU!" The two boys launched at each other, kicking and hitting and biting as hard as they could.

"Kenji, please." Mataji stood back, massaging the bridge of her nose as the slave stepped forward with a menacing expression and grabbed both boys by the shoulder and separated them.

"If you're old enough to fight properly you're old enough not to beat the shit out of each other over a 'jinx'." Mataji sighed as Kenji stood proudly, his arms shaking only a little at restraining the two inhuman children. Mataji eyed the man momentarily with unease. He was a bit stronger than she had once thought.

"BUT-" They both began, before getting cut off by a silky voice.

"Listen to our sister, will you? We'll all be very annoyed if you don't." Reiju drawled closing the door behind her with a definitive 'snick'.

"On second thought, go play in the corner. We have… girly things to talk about." Reiju smirked as the two boys clambered to get away, talking at length about how boring 'girl stuff' was and how they didn't understand how Reiju even _liked_ painting her nails.

As soon as Ichiji and Niji were sequestered on the other side of the room, they promptly began beating each other again but with less noise than before.

"I… I've been visiting him. I patched him up after the last time too." Reiju admitted quietly, suddenly looking her age again as she looked at her younger sister.

"They got him again today, I haven't had time to visit." Mataji lied, knowing full well she had had time. But to get Reiju to go…

"What?! I can't… We're about to go-ugh! Why didn't you tell me?!" Reiju bemoaned, her face entirely guilt-ridden. Good.

"I'm telling you now." Mataji tilted her head to the side innocently, trying her hardest to ignore Kenji's eyes burning a hole in the back of her head.

"Just… ARGH! What's the name of that ship? The one that might help him?" Reiju snapped, pulling her hair with her hands.

Bingo.

"You're going to help?" Mataji asked hopefully, praying for some sign that Sanji was going to be alright.

"No! I just… want to know. Before I go see him." Reiju ran her hands through her hair irritably, before focusing on Mataji with her one visible eye.

"Well?!"

"Oh! Erm, it's a cruise ship. Called the Orbit. It's all arranged. So long as it happens." Mataji raised an eyebrow before continuing.

"It'll probably be the only one in port by the time father's troops pass by. They stick to their schedule through pirates, government, and who knows what else. It'll be easy to spot." Mataji said blandly, picking at a bit of dry skin on her thumb idly.

Reiju had no answer for her as she turned on her heel and ran out of the room.

"Where'd big sis Reiju go?" Ichiji pused in pulling Niji's hair to turn and eye Mataji questioningly.

"Bathroom."

That short answer was enough to placate them. Mataji gripped the handrails as the boat began to lurch forward. And for the first time, she looked out the front window and paid close attention to the view.

Ahead of them was a large mountainous wall, immeasurably tall from a lower perspective. It was craggy and dotted with broken ships of years gone by. When Mataji squinted, she could see shattered skeletons high above. The most miraculous thing about this particular mountain though, was that the ocean rose to meet it. And there were no erosion marks on its surface whatsoever.

"We're… We're going to be going up _that_? In a _boat_?" Mataji croaked weakly so only Kenji could hear.

"Surely ya knew?" Monstrous snails lived below each and every Germa 66 'ship'. It allowed for a land and sea approach to their attacks. From her position, Mataji could see the eyestalk of their snail wink in determination at the wall before them.

"Knowing and seeing is a bit different here, I think." Mataji's eyes widened as the room tipped back slowly, slowly, slowly. The snail settled beneath the ship was jostling it from side to side to get comfortable. It shifted again. The prow of the boat was beginning the ascent up the Red Line.

"Heh. Turnin' into a scaredy cat _now_ are ya?" Kenji teased, but Mataji saw his fist tighten on the rail next to her too.

"I'm not sure I've ever _not_ been scared." Mataji replied, squeezing her eyes shut just in time to see Reiju sidle into the room with a grim expression and grip the handrail too.

Their estimated time of arrival on Cozia was three weeks from now.


	4. Poor Unfortunate Soul

Re-uploaded and beta'd with Seregunda's permission! I was enjoying the story too much to let it go, so when Seregunda dropped it I asked to take it over and give it a few tweaks. First few chapters will mostly be the same as the original, with some editing work done.

* * *

It began, as many things did in the Vinsmoke family, with the sound of cannonfire.

"Sanji, I'm very sorry but I've got to go. Father wanted me to be on deck for the assault. Reiju, keep Sanji company?" Mataji completely ignored the look of outrage on her elder sister's face as she bullied her way.

"I don't know what you're giving me that look for, none of the rest of you are allowed on deck. You're not doing anything else." Mataji drove the point home, and flicked her eye towards Sanji who was staring hopefully at the pair from behind the wrought iron mask.

For once, there was no guard to the room to be seen, all hands were brought on deck for the battle of Cozia.

"Fine. I'll stay here." Reiju looked unsure. Clearly she had come to no solid conclusion as to what she was going to do. Consciously, anyway.

Reiju had taken to visiting Sanji more often, and sometimes even in Mataji's company. Mataji had full confidence that Reiju was going to do right by Sanji.

"Mataji! Come back!" Sanji cried suddenly, as Mataji turned on her heel to walk away. She paused, her foot caught mid-air for a split second, before planting it firmly and continuing on. He didn't understand, not yet, why she did things the way she did.

Sanji is far too young and too good for a life in this family. She was not going to allow that to continue because she felt too guilty to walk away.

"Hey Reiju? Before you came down… Mataji was saying –" And the wheel keeps turning. Mataji smiled as she heard Sanji's voice go up an octave in panic. She didn't enjoy his fear, but the words he was repeating, words she had spoken off hand moments before, were going to be the key to his freedom. Whether he knew it or not.

"Kenji."

"Fuckin' weirdo."

The corner of Mataji's mouth twitched at the expression on her slave's face. He was utterly confused at this turn of events.

"Maybe. I won't just be some 'fuckin' weirdo' if it works." Mataji mimicked, jutting her chest out and grinding her vocal chords in a cheap imitation of Kenji's gravelly voice.

"Don't sound like that." Kenji griped, ready to take a swipe at her as they stepped out of the stairwell. This time he had waited halfway down, his curiosity too much to not listen to what they were saying and not enough to endure seeing a child with his head clamped in a mask.

"It's the Germa 66!"

"They really do exist!"

The voices were faint in the distance, but Mataji's superior hearing could just about pick them out.

"They know who we are." Kenji grumbled, and Mataji glanced up sharply at the man accompanying her.

"What?"

"Nothing." _How did you hear that?_

"Lord Jajji! The Cotzians have noticed our presence!"

"Do not let up! Continue the onslaught!"

Mataji paused again, right before stepping out onto the deck. The deck that she had no right to stand on physically, even when compared with her siblings.

A pretty woman in a plain way swam before Mataji's eyes momentarily before she forced it back. Ai. Jajji sounded exactly as in control of the situation on deck, cannons blazing and men screaming and dying, as he had sitting on his ornate chair (one step down from being called a throne) with Ai bleeding out on the floor before him for a crime he didn't consider to be that serious.

"Y'alrigh'?" Kenji nudged the young girl with his elbow, a deep frown marring his features.

"Hm? Yeah. Just remembering something." Mataji said brightly as she stepped out onto the deck, breathing deep as the sunlight hit her skin and the stench of rusted metal hit her nose. Blood.

 _"If I run away here and now… in the East Blue… I won't have to see Father's face ever again… WILL I?!"_ Sanji's voice echoed up from behind them, causing Mataji to start.

"Oops. Better hurry up Kenji!" Mataji bounded forward, slipping through the troops with ease that a larger form like Kenji's found difficult to emulate, but he managed.

Where was he… Where was he… There!

"Mataji! I was beginning to believe you had stayed below. Get in the crow's nest with that slave of yours, and watch how real genius fights!" Jajji's voice had changed again, no longer resembling the in-control monster from the day of Sanji's poisoning, but now resonating with the joy of a man who wanted nothing more than to fight.

"Yes, Father." Mataji bowed neatly and backed away, her job carried out now that she had been seen.

"C'mon Kenji."

The pair climbed easily to the top of the mast where the crow's nest was. Hardly the safest place to be with cannonballs flying about, but it had the best view of the entire battlefield. Jajji would prefer to take the chance of her dying while learning than safe and accomplishing nothing.

Once settled, Mataji watched. And listened. There wasn't much to listen to, not with guns and cannonballs and all other kinds of warlike sounds clashing and clanging and drowning out everything else. Because usually the ship was full of sound.

There are sounds on the Vinsmoke main ship at sea heard nowhere else in the world. Hollow moans inexplicably roll down the slopes of the sails. Rumbles like thunder course through the framework under cloudless skies. Recently on a moonlit night Mataji had heard tiny ringing tones floating down from the stars.

When she had first noticed, lying on her bed, Mataji had felt fear at hearing such eerie sounds. Later she had decided they had to be the workings of the thin, rapidly changing altitudes and atmosphere and the wind, of shifting ice formations and temperature changes between seas, had concluded there were scientific explanations. But after eight years Mataji was no longer certain. After so long on the ship, she had abandoned most of her prior beliefs about the workings of the world.

But then, because she had been listening specifically for this very noise, Mataji heard the creaking and bending of wrought iron bars. It was so distinct from all the other sounds that it was much easier to pick out than she had expected.

"Wha's tha' brat doin' down there?" Kenji spoke suddenly, his eyes narrowing as he watched Reiju dart out the door that would have led down to Sanji's cell.

"Ya didn'… Ya wouldn' get yer sister to do it for ya?" Kenji was blinking rapidly and staring hard at the door that Reiju had run out of.

Mataji stayed silent, what was coming next should speak for itself. Almost an entire minute later, Sanji was much slower than Reiju after all, a tiny figure with a wrought iron mask clamped over his head tottered out of the doorway and seemed to be frozen in shock at the ruckus above deck. He was almost directly below the crow's nest by the time he had taken note of everything and stopped.

"Begin the invasion!"

"Defeat Cozia!"

Mataji flicked her eyes away from her brother for a moment, noting that the ship had indeed arrived at the target harbour.

"Sanji! GET THE KEYS!" Mataji yelled from the birds nest, confident that with the noise and fuss that her voice would be heard at the base of the mast, but probably not much further. Her father was visible at the other end of the deck, shouting wildly and far too busy to hear what she had said.

Sanji jumped with a start, looking from side to side wildly as if Mataji was going to appear from nowhere.

"NOW!" Mataji's voice raised a pitch higher than it ever had before, and her brother leaped into action as he should despite not being able to identify the source of his instructions.

Sanji sidled around the edge of the Germa 66 soldiers, going entirely ignored as they not only believed that boy in particular was dead but too focussed on the approaching enemy at hand.

"Ya got this planned?" Mataji wondered if that was concern she heard in his voice. She'd pretend it was, in any case.

Wordlessly, Mataji raised her hand to point at a sturdy civilian ship bobbing in the harbour courageously, not very far away.

"Ya think he's gonna be able to get on it?"

"He's their new kitchen boy. I sorted out the application before we left for the Red Line. It's called the Orbit. They're waiting for him." Mataji stuffed her hands in her pockets, very carefully not looking an incredulous Kenji directly in the eye.

"Ya can't possibly've told 'em who 'e is?" Kenji asked, chewing his thumbnail as Sanji disappeared off-deck to the holding area where their father would more than likely be keeping the keys to his helmet.

"Of course not." Mataji scoffed, and toed her foot against the timber floor with a frown.

"It's not like I lied either, I told them his name. Most people would recognise the name Vinsmoke, but they only asked for a name. They were happy when I said Sanji, so I never clarified." Mataji defended her thinking righteously.

The Vinsmoke naming convention, while distinctive, was surprisingly not very well known or more people would avoid it. Kenji's name alone, born in the North Blue as he was, was proof that the locals feared the collective and rarely the singular.

" _No_." Mataji hissed, suddenly gripping the crow's nest with enough strength to splinter it slightly. Kenji glanced down, a little perturbed, but ultimately followed Mataji's gaze where Jajji was disappearing down the same stairwell that her brother had.

"Fuck."

Mataji and Kenji launched themselves down onto the deck as soon as Jajji was out of view.

Ducking and weaving through the thronged soldiers was relatively easy, especially with the threat of Sanji's capture looming over their heads.

"WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE?!" Jajji's booming voice carried enough that even had the pair had regular hearing, they would have heard his words from outside.

Silence ensued for a brief second, before Jajji continued.

"Ah, it's just you Sanji. I don't recall giving you permission to leave your cell."

"I'M LEAVING THIS PLACE, AND NOBODY'S STOPPING ME… NOT EVEN YOU!" Sanji's higher voice trilled weakly through the air, but the sound made Mataji pause. Sanji was more capable than she had given him credit for.

"Brave kid." Kenji murmured under his breath, and Mataji nodded sympathetically.

"Your stay in the basement seems to have had an adverse effect on your manners. You are now nothing but a commoner. There's no way someone of your ilk could ever hope to face and survive the harsh realities of this world. It'd be certain death for you." Jajji drawled uncaringly.

"Like I care what you think! Just try and stop me!" Sanji's voice was trembling, as if under great strain.

"That's music to my ears, actually… No matter how much I wanted it, my humanity wouldn't allow it. Even as useless as you are… I couldn't bring myself to dispose of you with my own hands. But now this opportunity has presented itself… You wishing to leave here of your own volition… Why on earth would I try and stop you? Feel free to take the key to the iron mask." Mataji closed her eyes as she heard Sanji begin to take heaving breaths that led to desperate sobs.

Her father could be so cruel.

"However as your father… I do have one last thing I'd like to ask of you Sanji." Jajji said, rather than asked, as he often did.

Sanji's response was unintelligible.

"It is regarding our family ties…"

" _What's going on? Where's Sanji?"_ Mataji jumped at the sudden hiss in her ear, and whipped around to see Reiju glaring at her in determination.

"Shh. Listen." Mataji placed a finger to her elder sister's lips and motioned for quiet, disembodied amusement twitching in her belly at her immediate compliance.

"Under no circumstances are you to ever identify yourself as my offspring! You are the sole blemish in my life… The one thing that I am ashamed of. Do I make myself clear?!" At these words, Sanji could be heard bursting into tears with a howl, while Reiju covered her face with her hands next to Mataji and trembled.

Reiju cried quietly. She always had. Or rather, she always must have because Mataji can't ever remember her doing it before.

"Kenji, we gotta get back up there fast! Reiju, remember, it's that ship right there! The Orbit!" Mataji pushed forward into the soldiers once more, ducking a sword that came dangerously close to her left cheekbone and continuing onward dutifully. She was sure she would get to the crow's nest in time.

Jajji would give Sanji sufficient time to leave before emerging himself after all. Now that he never had to meet Sanji's eyes again, he would never choose to.

"What are we gonna do about that cruise ship in the port?" Mataji heard the question waft over her and couldn't help the panic that clenched in her chest beside the knowledge that it would make no sense for Germa 66 to attack a ship totally unrelated to their mission. They were a lot of things, but picking pointless fights was beneath them.

"They're unrelated to our mission. Leave them be." The voice that responded was the slightly robotic tone of a newly 'hatched' and trained soldier. Before they gain any form of individuality, however little they may be capable of possessing, they are at their most efficient.

Mataji clambered onto the flat surface of the crow's nest just in time to peek her head over the side and watch Sanji emerge from the holding area. The iron mask was successfully removed from his head already, and Mataji could take some solace in the fact that it had to have been Jajji who removed it. Sanji's arms were too short to reach the whole way around the mask.

"I missed seeing his face." Mataji murmered, squinting hard and trying to memorize her brother's features even though they were scrunched up and wailing loudly. Reiju, hand clamped on Sanji's shoulder, wasn't in a much better condition.

"Ye've less weight to be draggin' up and down this shitty mast." Kenji grumbled, hauling himself over the edge gracelessly to squat next to Mataji with a slightly peeved expression. Now that everything had worked out alright it seemed that he had gone back to viewing every aspect of life as a minor inconvenience.

"Get on that ship, Sanji! Suck it up, quit sobbing like a baby, and just do it already!" Reiju shrieked, and Mataji winced. That would not have been her tactic to deal with a distraught Sanji, but realistically Mataji would probably just spoil him and give him everything he wanted.

"You can never come back to us… Do you hear me?! The world is a really big place… One day… You're definitely going to meet people who will treat you the way you deserve to be treated!" Reiju cried, forcefully turned Sanji around so he was facing the Orbit, and pushed hard to get him in motion. Sanji tripped several times while first getting into motion, but found his legs after a few moments and took off crying.

"GO! DON'T LOOK BACK, DON'T TURN BACK!" Reiju cried, choking on her words as the kindest of the siblings bolted out of their lives towards the cruise ship. Reiju wiped her eyes angrily, and sent a sharp accusatory glare up to Mataji and Kenji.

"Thought she'd be nicer t'ya after all this." Kenji commented drily as Reiju stomped off to the safe room where their other brothers were told to wait.

"She doesn't know exactly how much of this is my fault… But she knows it's a lot. She never wanted to have anything to do with this." Mataji sighed, allowing her eyes to drift from her sister lazily to watch her brother scarper off into the distance. He was heading in the right direction at least, he hadn't seemed to get it in his head to go anywhere other than the Orbit at any rate.

"She gonna get in trouble? He'll see the bars." That was something Mataji had noticed recently about Kenji. He rarely, if ever, called Jajji by his name, rank, or as if he was related to Mataji. He was careful not to say anything overly derogatory, other than referring to specific events that were factual rather than rumour mongering. It was always 'he'. Or 'him'.

"No. You heard him, right? Don't pretend you didn't, I know your senses are better than you let on. He seemed… happy to be rid of Sanji." Mataji scratched her chin idly, thinking as quickly as she could while watching the fighting below closely enough to refer points of it back to her father.

"Makes all the work ya did seem pointless." Kenji grinned, showing almost as much gum as teeth.

"I don't think so. Sanji's been asking to be let out for ages now. I think father might have always been planning on giving in when he reached the East Blue, but probably after liberating Cozia. Not before."

"So?"

"Sooooo, where do you think Sanji would have gone if that had happened? He certainly wouldn't have a place on board a ship, where he can work for food and clothes, be relatively comfortable, and have the opportunity to maybe eventually learn to be a chef like he wants to. Sanji probably would have been dumped out on the streets of Cozia to starve to… No. Father wouldn't do that of his own volition, I think. But he would have at least been left at the orphanage on island. No prospects, little food and water. Very little chance at getting what he wants in life. This way, he _might_ end up happy." Mataji mumbled, coming to several conclusions and tossing them away as she spoke.

It was unlikely that she would ever discover the plan her father had for Sanji. If he had ever had one at all. There was no discounting that it might have been a spur of the moment decision. Unlikely, considering Jajji's character, but still entirely possible. It wasn't exactly a taxing situation to think through, even given the situation Jajji would always have been better off without Sanji when success was measured the way Jajji did.

"Condescendin' brat."

"I might not be a brat for long. I'm already a lot taller than my siblings. I might be taller than you soon." Mataji said airily, allowing a brief grin to cross her face at the look of outrage that crossed Kenji's.

"Y'ain't never gonna be bigger than me!"

"Double negative says I will."

A stream of expletives erupted from Kenji's mouth in a continuous grumble as he cradled his head in his hands at the edge of the crow's nest and watched the warring men below with surprisingly little bloodlust.

"You don't want to join the fighting?" Mataji asked lightly, watching without blinking as a Germa 66 spear was thrust through the thoracic cavity of a Cotzian.

"Cozia ain't done noth-… Cozia's never done anythin' t'me." Kenji caught himself midsentence with an irritated shake of his head. Mataji ignored his self-corrected grammar with a hidden smile.

"Okay."

* * *

Jajji had started playing a game with Mataji the past month since their invasion of Cozia. Not a traditional father-daughter game of any kind, but relatively harmless considering the experiments they were taking part in as they played.

"Thinking."

"A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions-as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all." Mataji answered easily, the game came to her much quicker now.

"Power."

Gandhi. _The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace._ No, father would hate that one.

"Power resides only where men believe it resides. A shadow on the wall, yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow." Death and destruction and true power, that should – there. Jajji was smiling now. A little.

"Change."

"We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners to it." Shit, that was a bit too ominous. On cue, Jajji's eyes hardened.

"Sanji."

"I… eh… um…" No! Mataji knew she wouldn't be able to think of a non-incriminating quote from her past life. She couldn't.

"I can't think of one." Mataji said truthfully.

"You lose." Jajji stood slowly, and Mataji placed the pipette she had been holding on the table diligently, squaring herself.

It was physically impossible to win the game, there was no score kept or end to the words her father could come up with. Sometimes when he got bored but had been satisfied with her answers, he just let the game drop.

Since Sanji left, she was the closest thing to a disappointment the family had. Her intelligence kept her in Jajji's company, and in his favour, but her lack of excelling in physical areas compared to her siblings was a sore spot.

"Without your brain, what is it that you're good for? Keep that in mind." Jajji allowed his hand to fall threateningly to his sword belt, where the scabbard he had beaten her with a few times was hanging loosely, but ultimately allowed his hand to drop to his side. A close call. Closer than Mataji liked.

"Although you _do_ have a remarkable accuracy in these labs. Eight years old and able to take part in procedures that many adults can't do? Even genetic engineering of the most advanced kind couldn't give you that. You are my daughter, in the end. More than the others." Jajji watched Mataji like a hawk, who picked up the pipette now that the immediate danger was gone and turned back to the 36 well plate she had been working on.

Her father began his own work on the opposite side of the lab, apparently bored of the word game.

Mataji could see Kenji ease back into a relaxed posture against the wall now that the danger had passed.

Mataji had tried to explain how her father's curiosity about the words worked to him last week. Kenji didn't understand how Jajji had been more than capable of believing she knew scientific facts randomly, but not capable of stringing together impressive sounding sentences.

 _"It's the way the sentences are. The way they roll off the tongue. They're the words of the greats. He knows they're not my words. You can hide facts… especially when I could have found a way to secretly read Father's research. But you can't hide this. Not really."_ Mataji had said, but Kenji had steadfastly disbelieved her reasoning. Mataji didn't know whether to be flattered that he believed she was capable of creating such pretty words or exasperated at his stubborn will to believe the worst of Jajji at every possible interval.

Kenji believed that she knew everything, with no explanation, and her Father likely believed that she was an expert spy.

Even now Kenji's eyes were boring into the back of Mataji's skull as soon as she turned around, causing the last words he had spoken during that conversation to echo around in her head.

" _Ya might've saved yer brother… But ye've backed yerself into a worse corner'n I've ever seen."_

 _"I know."_

 _"Ya gotta get out too. Ya gotta."_

 _"Not yet, though."_

 _"I know."_

 _"There's stuff that has to be done here. Things I have to figure out. Without getting killed for doing it, hopefully."_

 _"I know."_


	5. Welcome (to our family time)

Re-uploaded and beta'd with Seregunda's permission! I was enjoying the story too much to let it go, so when Seregunda dropped it I asked to take it over and give it a few tweaks. First few chapters will mostly be the same as the original, with some editing work done. Sorry for the delay, college life gets the better of me sometimes.

And since I have last updated, the siblings' true hair colours have been revealed as something other than blonde in the anime/mange... I'm not going to change their hair colours from blonde as kids, because it ties in well with the story, but the siblings are going to dye their hair later to follow canon appearances.

And yes, I am naming each chapter after a disney/dreamworks/pixar song.

* * *

One year and seven months later

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.

And this happens to everyone, not only those involved in the business of assassination. And make no mistake, a business is what it is.

"So if I strain this before filtering the poison that is excreted is more potent, but the pulp can also be used as an antibacterial poultice?" Mataji spoke aloud, glancing up at her father who nodded solemnly. Mataji allowed a brief grin to flit across her face and smothered it.

She caught herself doing that more and more lately. Smiling at the thought of pleasing her father. It was difficult to maintain her position on that tightrope, enough of her original self to know right from wrong but enough of Mataji to excel at training.

And she was beginning to.

"You have a talent for poisons, only your sister is more gifted and she is… an unusual case. You are doing well." Jajji spoke, watching Mataji intently. He didn't analyse her behaviour nearly as closely as he once had before. He knew that Mataji was comfortable in her position now. Used to it.

"Unusual is right. She's only a year older than me and decided to dye her hair pink." Mataji muttered, delighting in the amused bark of a laugh she drew from her father.

"Leave her be. She wants to forge her own identity in our world." Jajji smiled, causing Mataji to pause as she placed the filter paper in the funnel she had been about to use.

"Identity?" Mataji asked curiously, tilting her head to the side a little in a manner that she had recently learned encouraged her father to continue speaking.

"She is so much like her mother. So like each of your brothers, come to that. It is no wonder she wants to appear different. Your brothers will follow suit soon, I expect." Jajji waved the question off as pointless, allowing his finger to drift to his pointed moustache and twirl it thoughtfully.

"Not like me?" Mataji asked lightly, already knowing the answer as she began to pour the contents of her beaker into the filter in increments, watching closely.

"Ha! No. None of the others are quite like you." Jajji said placing his hand on Mataji's head and ruffled her hair which caused the girl to glow with pride before she admonished herself. She had to stop that.

"How has your physical training come along?" Jajji asked, settling on a hard backed chair and watching, this question hadn't been asked in an accusatory manner in months.

"Better. Only Ichiji remains consistently stronger than me now. I can defeat Niji more often than not. I win consistently against both Reiju and Yonji." Mataji confirmed, feeling happiness bubble up inside her at her Father's pleased expression. She tried and failed to squash it down. It was such a feat to gain Jajji's favour that it gave its own sense of accomplishment.

It helped that it was also true. Mataji had begun training harder once Sanji was safe, hidden from her father. There wasn't much else to do, now that the one person she had truly cared for was gone. The added inches of height she had gained in that time only added to her advantage over her siblings. She just kept growing.

Mataji was never sure how much Kenji counted in that regard, as he had been forced to stay by her side in the first place. The unsure nature of his loyalty prevented Mataji from ever feeling truly close to him. She supposed she could just _ask_ his opinion, but indignation rose in her chest at the thought. Of each of the seven sins, pride has always been the one that had the hardest grip on her. While she understood the logical need to vocalise her feelings, there was a vice grip in her chest at the thought of broaching the subject of emotion with anyone in this world other than Sanji.

"Good. Very good. This strength coupled with your intelligence, you are indeed my daughter." Jajji rumbled proudly, and Mataji couldn't help the tweak of shame that shivered through her core.

Genetic engineering notwithstanding, she was still an adult competing with children. Even then, while in brute strength they were still above her, she had learned from watching where they hadn't. She watched Jajji fight from the crow's nest still, every time she had been allowed, whenever there was an attack. He fought with intelligence too, not just brute strength. Through mimicry, Mataji had created a bastardisation of her father's style. This involved a lot of fighting dirty and anticipation of the opponent's moves.

Whether her true nature was that of a prodigy or not in this world, who could tell. She had been _intelligent_ in her previous life. Very much so. But she had never broken through the barrier between intelligence and the unbridled genius that she had encountered in her admittedly short career in science before her death. Oh her ambition had always driven her, possibly further than some of those who had more natural intelligence than she had, but when compared to those who could both put in the work and had that streak of genius? She was nothing.

And no amount of hard work could have changed that. She was going to be successful, but not blindingly so. That would have to change here. Especially if she was going to find Sanji.

Especially if she was going to escape her father.

"Thank you Father, your example has guided me." Mataji said, being sure to smile brightly as she had taken to doing in Jajji's presence. It sickened her now how naturally it came. She hated that she loved the man.

How was it possible for her to love someone so twisted? Someone who had done so much harm to one of her most precious people? A small, childlike voice answered from the recesses of Mataji's mind before she could squash it – _because he's your Dad._

'He is not!' Mataji thought immediately, angry with herself. Her 'Dad' had been a kind man with a weathered face, balding head, and a fondness for ice cream.

Jajji was not 'Dad'… But he was something. Something closer to Mataji than she had anticipated. And now that the unpleasant demeanour that Jajji had exhibited with Sanji around was no longer prevalent, it was much harder to hate him as whole heartedly as she had done.

After all, all the darkness in the world can't extinguish a single candle.

"Hn. Come to my office after you eat your dinner. I wish to give you another assignment." Jajji stood up, surveyed Mataji removing the filter paper delicately from the funnel and placing it to the side, and left with a smirk.

"Ye migh' wan't'a knock that dopey grin off yer face. Migh' actually be a long distance one this time." Kenji's gravelly voice jeered from the shadowed doorway that her father had left through. Mataji restrained herself from jumping, just. She hadn't heard him approach.

"I know. I hope it is." Mataji nodded decisively with her words, eyes hard.

"Do ya?" Kenji drawled, retreating back into the hallway while scratching the back of his head.

Mataji felt as if sour milk had found its way into her stomach.

* * *

"I'm so jealous all you guys have gotten to go on missions." Yonji complained at the dinner table later that day, dropping his chin onto its surface with a dull thud. His slicked back hair slipped forward onto his face, but Mataji could still tell that he was scowling.

All five of the Vinsmoke siblings were sitting at a banquet table laden with far too much food for the five of them, maids (and Kenji) standing at the side of the room in case anything was needed. Mataji couldn't see how anything possibly could be, but her brothers often managed to think of something.

"You're the youngest, you know." Reiju attempted to placate the boy, whose head immediately whipped up and his frown deepened.

"No I'm not, SHE is!" Yonji pointed rather rudely at Mataji, who blinked balefully in his direction with a soup spoon in her mouth. It was true, while Reiju was a year older, and each of the remaining siblings were ten years old, Mataji had been born unexpectedly a handful of minutes after Yonji.

Hence her name.

"You know she doesn't count." Reiju sighed disparagingly, raising her eyes to the heavens for help in a manner that made her look far older than a mere eleven years old.

Mataji's doleful eyes settled on her elder sister now, who bristled.

"Don't look at me like that, especially when _you know it's true_!" Reiju hissed.

Mataji blinked again, pulled the spoon out of her mouth, filled it again, and popped it back in. She knew it was true. For all the oddities surrounding each of the siblings, even they had noticed the way she acted now. It had taken ten years, but even her brothers had finally noticed that her personality was odd for their age.

Odd in general really.

"Yonji would you really prefer to be as weird as Mataji? I know I'd rather wait an extra month or two

to be ready than have a personality like that." Ichiji jeered, freezing when Mataji turned her blank eyes to him and stared. She made an extra effort not to blink, just to unnerve him. He was young enough that it still worked.

"Come on you know I'm only joking! Jeez, don't be so sensitive!" He protested immediately, crossing his arms over his chest and looking anywhere that wasn't Mataji's face. She allowed a grin to flit across her face and he relaxed immediately.

There was never any bite to Ichiji's barbs with her. They always were truly the usual sibling nit-picking rather than the cruelty Sanji had endured.

"But I'm stronger than her." Yonji griped, glaring now. Mataji still didn't react. Her siblings were better at dealing with this behaviour than she was.

"But she _wins_." Niji finally spoke up, nodding wisely. "Doesn't matter if you can lift more than her, what are you going to do? _Lift_ our enemies into submission?"

"It's not as if I've even had enemies to face, though. Only Reiju and Ichiji have, I think." Mataji said slowly, watching as Yonji's expression turned incredulous.

"Then what have you been _doing_?" Yonji asked in total bewilderment.

"Deliveries and stuff for Father. I think he wants me to be known in his scientific circle." Mataji shrugged, because she truly didn't know what were in the documents she had delivered to her father's agents.

She didn't trust her skills to be able to open them undetected, Jajji would surely find out. Why send her on such simple 'missions' if not to determine loyalty?

"What?!" Yonji seemed shocked that Mataji hadn't been spending her time in the midst of battles of epic proportions and high class espionage.

"It's true. I never even get to go very far, only to the island a day or so ahead before you guys catch up and pick me up again. Really, my missions are duller than staying on the ship." Mataji explained to her wide-eyed brother who no longer looked even remotely envious.

"Ha! So you're just a messenger girl!" He crowed delightedly, not paying much notice to his two older brothers exchanging looks at the opposite end of the table.

"Pretty much." Mataji smiled, her tone light.

And while it was true, the missions were mind-numbingly boring thus far, she waited for one that wasn't. One that went that little bit further from home. That little bit vaguer than the specific orders she had received thus far. Maybe it would never come. But if it did, she would be ready.

Mataji's natural state of being had always been thus – she saw her own actions as experiments and questions-as attempts to find out something. Success and failure have been for her answers above all. But the learning curve was a bit steeper when one was a member of the Vinsmoke family, and failure was not tolerated as part of an experiment here.

"Mataji, what are you doing with Father in the lab?" Ichiji asked suddenly, throwing Mataji off focus for the umpteenth time since his fascination with the lab had begun to grow. His interest lay not in the science, which would have delighted Jajji had his strongest child also begun to show a proficiency of the mind, but in the 'ethics' of it. To describe the situation lightly.

Ichiji had begun to show signs of being obsessed with the Germa 66 soldiers. He had discovered that they were clones (as had Niji) when they had followed Mataji with the intent of pelting her with water balloons. The concept of growing people, so foreign an idea to most in this world never mind a ten year old boy, had been the topic of his interest.

"Nothing too strenuous today. Father was showing me different poisons and how to use their residues. I think it's probably the same kind of thing he taught you, Reiju." Mataji opened the conversation up, not wanting to be drawn into talking about the Germa 66 soldiers growing suspended in media behind that heavy locked door.

Inadvertently, Mataji had acknowledged in her mind that at ten years old she was technically the mother to seven of the ten year old almost-soldiers if one was determined not to stray from the natural law of parentage. She had, technically, raised and nursed those rapidly-growing clones until they were the same age she was. They would be older than her by the end of the year. She hated to think about it. But for all that she disliked the idea of fully grown men following her like ducklings and screaming 'Mommy' at her, the reality was that not one of them would have any memory of being anything but a normal man.

Mataji listened half-heartedly as Reiju's eyes lit up and she began babbling about poisons, much to Ichiji's chagrin. The girl had an odd obsession with the toxins, but Mataji supposed that she couldn't judge.

As the minutes whittled into the hour and Mataji was happily stuffed, she stood with a sigh and attracted the attention of her siblings who had been arguing over whether Ichiji or Niji would look cooler with red hair.

"I had better leave for father's quarters. I don't want to be too late." Mataji said, and this was enough of an explanation for any of the siblings. Nobody was late for Jajji.

Kenji fell in beside her as she walked, silent and eying her with interest.

They walked easily like this for some time, before Mataji gave in.

"What?"

"Yer more'a kid now'n you were when I firs' met ye." Kenji said, shrugging his shoulders as if it couldn't be helped. Mataji frowned, mulling his words over.

"Well, I am only ten." She answered readily, which Kenji ignored, but his words continued rattling around in her head.

Most of her company had been children these past years. She had grown closer to her other siblings with Sanji gone, it went without saying that their behaviour could easily have influenced hers without her noticing. Her training with Jajji, while daily, was only directly supervised for an hour a day ordinarily.

An hour of contact a day, and the word of slave bound to her, was likely not enough to maintain the edge as unconsciously as she had expected it to.

"You're more observant now than you were when I first met you." Mataji sighed, smiling ambivalently at Kenji before coming to a stop in front of the door. She would have to keep an eye on that.

After rapping smartly on the door, Mataji moved forward when her father called her inside.

Jajji was not alone in the room. He was flanked on either side by Germa 66 soldiers, and Mataji recognised the pins on their uniforms to tell that they were 'elite' soldiers, each in charge of their own squadron. It was unlikely that her business overlapped with theirs. Jajji glanced up – an almost cruel grin flitting across his mouth – as he uttered a single word.

"Beauty." Ah, the game returned. It did, every once in a while, with less and less frequency as time went on. But this word, Mataji could answer instantly. It was a long quote from a man that never existed in this world, but had stuck with her through both of her lives and so had a power over her that she couldn't quite explain.

"I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colours in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the colour. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts."

Jajji's eyes flitted briefly to meet hers, before turning to face the two Germa soldiers once more.

"Tell Big Mama it's a no. At this point in time we will not allow for compromise. Leave." Jajji jerked his head towards the door. Without even a flicker of recognition that Jajji had just been rude to them, both Germa soldiers saluted promptly and marched out of the room.

Mataji had to restrain herself from asking what that had been about. She never would have been told anyway.

"I see that slave is still with you." Jajji commented, as he occasionally did, on Kenji's presence. The tall slave stiffened imperceptibly. If Mataji had not been standing at his side even she wouldn't have noticed.

"Yes, father. He remains as loyal as the Germa, but with enough initiative to be useful where they aren't." Mataji answered easily, not even lying this time. She valued Kenji's opinions, and she had learned as much from him throughout the years as she had her own father. Kenji was a good teacher – Mataji had learned everything about sailing from him. The basics of cartography (she had to refer to the library past that point, as Kenji hadn't been the actual navigator of his crew), she was proficient in all knots likely to be useful on the seas, how to jibe and how to tack.

Mataji considered herself lucky, she had very good teachers at her disposal in terms of both sailing and science.

"Good. A rare quality. Now, to business." As usual, Jajji didn't have patience for the lives of those he viewed as below his own beyond ensuring that they wouldn't interfere with his own.

"You are aware of where we are situated right now, am I correct?" Jajji began, watching closely.

"We crossed over to the East Blue again two weeks ago… due north by north-east since… I suppose we would have to be close to Tequila Wolf?" Mataji surmised, brow furrowing deeply as her face twisted in thought.

"Correct. That is also your destination. It will be up to you whether you wish to bring him or not." Jajji was eying Kenji with distrust. Mataji suddenly understood why Kenji had registered on Jajji's radar to the extent it had prior to this 'mission'.

Tequila Wolf is a country in the East Blue and much less fun than the name suggests; it is the construction site of a massive bridge, instead of an island. The bridge has been under construction for the past seven hundred years, upon demand of the World Nobles. The enormous feat is being carried out (secretly) by various slaves who are either criminals or people from countries that are not allied with the World Government. Mataji was unsure as to what the actual purpose of this monstrous bridge was, but she assumed it was to connect all the islands together.

Who knows what effect bringing Kenji to Tequila Wolf would have, if any. On one hand, it would show how much worse his life could have been and thus ingratiate him to her and thus her cause further. On the other hand it could bring him to hate Mataji as an extension of the Vinsmoke family considering it was their considerable funds that pushed the bridge's production in recent years.

"He is too useful to leave behind. I wouldn't like to bring a servant – or slave – along that is unused to my habits. Too much hassle." Mataji waved dismissively, in a way that she knew her father would think nothing of. It helped that there was also a grain of truth to it. Mataji's duties often ran opposite to what the Germa 66 were trained for, and too much of a conflict of interest would jeopardise the results.

"Good. Now, an old colleague of Vegapunk's is spending a short time on Tequila Wolf. He is merely selecting slaves for further experiments of his, he is a brilliant mind when directed… But Vegapunk's dismissal of him seems to have resulted in a loss of direction. All the same, he has completed some brilliant work in spite of his wanderings. What I want you to do is this, get him to agree to meet with me to discuss his latest discovery. Failing that, I want you to try and find out how exactly his new 'discovery' is made. This is an important mission, Mataji. I am putting a lot of trust in you." Jajji said seriously, blinking very little.

Mataji froze, gears whirring in her head. An old colleague of Vegapunk's… who is still prominent enough for even her father to acknowledge him? There was only one person that could be.

"Father, what is it that Caesar Clown has discovered?" Mataji asked, brow furrowing. She could sense Kenji stiffen even further at her side. Although Jajji seemed proud at her deductive skills.

"Several things, however only one of these are unique enough to be of use to Germa 66." Jajji paused as he spoke, giving Mataji enough time to consider what he was saying. A direct Germa 66 mission, that meant that Mataji was finally being moved into military operations.

"It is called SAD. The main production line is on Punk Hazard of course, but if he is coming this far out of his way to select one hundred percent ignorant slaves… He has to have brought a smaller scale lab with him for the experiments." Jajji twisted his fingers through his moustache again, and Mataji found that she had more questions than answers.

"What does SAD do?" She asked curiously, unthinkingly putting her interest before mission parameters. A mistake concerning Jajji.

"That's a need-to-know. And you don't need to know. We will wait for three days at the perimeter of Samba Island before coming to meet you, I have business with Newgate there. Should you fail, or believe your life to be in any true danger, contact will be through den-den mushi as usual. I would be surprised if Caesar has the nerve to damage a member of my own family, however. Questions?" Jajji asked sharply, the hint of pride that had shone through earlier now long gone.

"Yes. I know that Caesar focuses on chemistry and biological warfare, but why is he viewed as dangerous outside of his work?" Mataji asked, and saw a glimmer of respect in her father's eyes again.

"He ate the Gas-Gas Fruit. Which, as you can imagine, when paired with his intimate knowledge of the substances can be quite dangerous." Jajji sounded unconcerned.

"Even for a Vinsmoke?" Mataji asked, aware that the question sounded big headed but it needed to be asked.

"Your exposure to poisons will make you less susceptible to his usual attacks if it comes to that, which I doubt it will, but remember his genius. I have little doubt that should a… disagreement occur, he will have little issue finding something that will." Jajji explained slowly, and Mataji nodded in understanding.

It all amounted to suck up as much as you can and don't anger the poison man.

That must be why she was being sent instead of Ichiji who would be the best physical choice, or Reiju who is immune to more poisons than any of the siblings. There was no telling what Caesar had concocted, so intelligence and patience would be the biggest requirement.

But while it was obviously an important mission, Mataji couldn't shake the feeling that if this was such an important mission Jajji would complete it by himself. Surely it would give a better impression to approach the man in person?

Or was Jajji's self-importance so great that he genuinely believed himself above meeting Caesar Clown face to face?

Mataji didn't think she was going to understand until she got more information. Which she was unlikely to get from her father. So, in that respect, going to Caesar himself was the best option.

"When should I leave?" Mataji asked confidently, curious enough now that she didn't mind going on the mission. What on earth was SAD?

"Within the hour. I am providing you with nothing for this mission, even the den-den mushi you will select for yourself from the Vinsmoke colection. You will pack for yourself what you believe necessary." Jajji finished bringing his hand together behind his back and watching the pair closely.

Mataji froze, still unsure whether Jajji was dismissing her or not. He enjoyed making people uncomfortable enough that she doubted he would ever make it clear when a meeting was over.

"Now." Jajji enunciated slowly, as if he was speaking to somebody particularly thick.

Mataji jumped to attention, tapped Kenji on the forearm and walked so briskly out of the room it could almost be considered jogging.

Once the door snapped shut behind herself and Kenji, she really did begin running.

"One hour to collect all that, why?" Kenji lamented, but Mataji couldn't see what he was complaining about. His legs were still much longer than hers, he could cover the ground more easily than she could.

"I don't know, part of it I suppose. Can you get the den-den mushi and your change of clothes? I'll sort the food, my stuff, and see if I can bring a bribe or something." Mataji yelped, panicking now at the thought of all she had to do.

"Which one? Grumpy blue one?" Kenji was beginning to pull ahead as they approached the fork where they would split up according to Mataji's orders.

"No, the yellow! Furthest range." Mataji called, and Kenji twisted around.

"It's lazy though."

"Yeah I'm getting the food, I'll bring some papaya, it'll make him work way overtime!" Mataji explained as Kenji raised an arm into the air in understanding.

Kenji took off, far outpacing Mataji despite the fact that at her current speed average humans should not be capable of such a thing. Some day, she would learn exactly how much Kenji was capable of.

"What to use, what to use…." Mataji panted as she approached her room, stuffing her personals into the small bag she usually used on such missions. She wanted to avoid conflict with Caesar at all costs, and bringing a gift/bribe seemed like the way to go.

Didn't help that she knew nothing about the man outside of being interested in science, and there was no way that she would be giving him Vinsmoke research. Not only would her father kill her for it, but giving Caesar too much power could only be a bad plan.

Mataji glanced around her room frantically. It was filled with expensive trinkets, not of her own volition.

Vase, no. Jewelry, probably no. Tapestry? Definitely not….

After four minutes of frantic searching Mataji found something. A wrought gold eyepiece from Shandora, proven to have been created during the Void Century. Interesting but useless outside of market value, it was perfect.

Mataji stuffed the eyepiece into her pocket, eyes brimming with determination as she turned on her heel to go meet Kenji by their boat. This was too interesting to leave alone.


	6. The Headless Horseman

Astrasia: Thank you for your kind reviews, I made an effort to be a bit quicker with this chapter. And yes, the Headless Horseman actually is a disney song, from the 1949 The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad. I was surprised too. And no, while Sanji is not actually in this chapter his reappearance can be expected soon.

* * *

Tequila Wolf was the most depressing place that Mataji had the fortune to step foot upon.

She and Kenji had tied their boat to a dock several hundred meters away from the most recent entrance to the 'country' which consisted of a construction site on the unfinished end of the bridge. Since the construction of the bridge has taken around several hundred years, the civilization had to move forward as the bridge advanced. As a result, there were many ruins of work camps further down the bridge. They had looked desolate and ghostly as Kenji had steered their little boat by.

Sea mist was wafting up over the sides of the bridge, which was so cold that it froze to anything it touched. Mataji was immensely glad for the thick padded jackets and gloves that they both wore, as the two inches of her face exposed from above the collar of her jacket and below her thick woollen hat was prickling uncomfortably in the biting wind.

The bridge itself was monstrous, settled high enough above the ocean that even should a storm hit it was unlikely that more than seafoam would breach the walls no matter the size of the wave. Especially in the East Blue, which wasn't known for particularly violent storms. Its width was comparable only to an actual town, and could fit dozens of houses across it.

This was what the majority of the bridge seemed to be used for, at the moment. Hundreds of narrow slate grey houses were visible in the distance. All identical, all nondescript. They appeared to be made of remarkable durable material for a nomadic country.

"This place's total crap." Kenji was glaring at the entryway ahead with his narrow slanted eyes, his tufted hair looking even stiffer than usual. Mataji moved her hand to her own hair poking out from under her hat and grimaced, it felt brittle in the cold. She stuffed it under the collar of her jacket.

"You're not wrong." Mataji groaned, only spotting the guards at the entrance to Tequila Wolf now. The two of them appeared to be watching the approaching pair warily.

"What d'ye think're our chances that he told 'em we were comin'?" Kenji asked grumpily, stamping his feet a little harder than usual against the stone bridge in an attempt to warm his toes.

"Pretty high, I think. He wouldn't be worried about Caesar Clown, exactly, but he'd be a tricky enemy to have for no reason. Father wouldn't bring that on himself for no reason, way too much effort." Mataji theorised, not having thought about it until now but finding reason in her own words. Jajji was far too analytical to make an enemy of Caesar Clown for no reason.

' _But what if there is a reason? It's not like he tells you much, is it?'_ Mataji shook her head, trying to free herself of the nagging thought. Whether that was the final outcome or not, going into this acting overly suspiciously would only result in failure either way.

Mataji doubted, if Caesar was anything like her own father, that she would be able to fake naivety. Better to just not think about it, and remove all possibility of it showing on her face.

"Don't come any closer, state your business!" The guard on the left shouted, suddenly drawing a sword and puffing himself up as big as he possibly could. Mataji couldn't help but notice from the numerous sword-related training session that Jajji had inflicted on the Vinsmoke siblings that the guard was gripping the hilt incorrectly.

"Mataji Vinsmoke. Here as an ambassador for your current… high profile guest." Mataji said, cursing her high childish voice not for the first time. Her height was deceptive, her voice was not.

Both guards started upon hearing her full name and leaped to the side.

"Miss Vinsmoke, we have been expecting you. We heard of your age and hadn't expected… My apologies." The guard who had brandished his sword was trembling slightly, looking ill.

"I am a taller visitor than you would have been expecting if you were told a ten year old. It's no trouble." Mataji responded graciously, knowing full well that she was approaching the height of many fully grown women at her young age.

Her graciousness unnerved the guard further, whose eyes slid to land on her curled eyebrow as if in disbelief, and upon finding the very noticeable curl, straightened his posture even more.

"Miss Vinsmoke, I shall accompany you to Master Caesar's base of operations." The guard who had not brandished any weapons bowed deeply, unspoken apologies radiating off him with hints of fear. Mataji could hear Kenji's muffled laughter to her left.

"Thank you, that is very kind." Mataji did not address the fact that it was obvious that the guard had been ordered to accompany her, whether she chose to agree or not. Having a Vinsmoke, child or not, wandering around Tequila Wolf was likely to cause trouble. Much easier to follow the rules when it didn't contradict their goal.

"Heh." Kenji scoffed, but remained silent when Mataji turned to raise a questioning eyebrow at him.

The guard ran his eyes over Kenji, appearing to be worried by his impressive physique, until his eyes came to rest on the bomb collar just visible over the edge of the padded yellow jacket that the man was wearing. The guard scoffed in turn and turned to face forwards again.

Mataji had to shoot a warning look at the slave to prevent him from pursuing his irritation. He had started it after all.

Mataji took the silence as a chance to survey the camp that they were walking through. It appeared to be segregated by sex, most of the female slaves working in groups on slightly less demanding tasks than the male. But not by much. Mataji watched out of the corner of her eye as several women took a firm grip on a rope that looked as sturdy as the bridge itself and began to pull. This rope was attached to a pallet laden down with more stone for the construction of the bridge. The women's arms were quivering violently with the effort, and some were straining themselves to such an extent that surely it would be better to stop.

But a warden lounging nearby with a remote in his hand answered this question for Mataji.

When Mataji had drawn level with this group of slaves a loud beeping began, suddenly, coming from one of the women who had been struggling the most.

"No, NO! I'm trying, I am!" The woman cried out, throwing her entire body weight into the endeavour and clearly ignoring the screaming of her own muscles. The pallet began to move more quickly. After a few seconds of this increased pace, the little light on the edge of the woman's bomb collar stopped flashing and the sound that had been reverberating through the ice capped bridge came to a similar end.

The guard who had held the remote in his hand winked conspiratorially as they passed by, tapping the remote to his nose with a nasty expression on his face. Now that they were closer, Mataji could see that it was a remote similar to the one that controlled Kenji's bomb collar. But with many, many more buttons. It appeared as if this single guard was responsible for the continued lifespan of each of these women.

Mataji allowed her arm to brush against Kenji's, attempting to be comforting but knowing there was damn well nothing that she could do to erase the thoughts that were without a doubt running through his mind.

How close had he been to a similar fate? Had Jajji not needed two slaves for two specific purposes it was very likely that an ex-pirate of some considerable strength would have been sent to work as a labourer. Not many other rich families had needs to be met that were dangerous enough to have bought Kenji.

"Come on, put your backs into it!" Another guard snapped at a group of men, struggling to move a similarly large weight.

"Faster!" Shouted at a group of women carrying individual rocks.

"It'll be another seven hundred years by the time you get to the edge of the camp, MOVE IT!"

By the time Mataji and Kenji had reached a plain concrete slab, large but with no windows and only a single door, their moods, low before entering Tequila Wolf, had plummeted several times lower.

How people could be treated this way… It was insane. Crazy. Do the guards not see their wives, sons, daughters, husbands, flashing before their eyes as they committed these atrocities?

' _If they ever did, they definitely don't anymore_.' Mataji thought grimly, reminded once again of an awful experiment that had taken place in another place and another time.

The Stanford prison experiment had been an attempt to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison guards. The team selected twenty four males whom they deemed to be psychologically stable and healthy. Predominantly white, middle class men.

Twelve of the twenty four participants were assigned the role of prisoner (nine plus three alternates), while the other twelve were assigned the role of guard (also nine plus three alternates). The parameters of the experiment had been designed to induce disorientation, depersonalization, and deindividuation in the participants.

Long story short, the prisoners had begun to go crazy. Several guards became increasingly cruel as the experiment continued; experimenters reported that approximately one-third of the guards exhibited genuine sadistic tendencies. Most of the guards were upset when the experiment concluded after only six days.

Humans hadn't changed much from one world to the next.

Mataji and Kenji's escort rapped three times sharply on the door.

"Who is it~?" The voice was high, and held the sound of barely contained mirth. It was a sound that did not belong in this environment.

"It is the gate guard, here to deliver the Vinsmoke ambassador." Mataji noticed that the guard made much more of an effort to sound imposing with Caesar than he had with her.

"Shurorororo, well, well, Jajji has finally come to his senses I see." There was the sound of several clicks as the door unlocked and it swung open to reveal one of the odder looking men that Mataji had ever met.

He wore a bright purple jumpsuit with a low v-neck and yellow polka dots. His skin was deathly pale, and he was wearing very purple lipstick which matched his similarly coloured hair. His bright amber eyes were quick and calculating.

But the oddest thing about this man was the shroud of cloudy gas that licked about his body, forming the shape of what could only be a trenchcoat.

"Ah? _This_ is what he sends me? Is this a joke?" his expression was quizzical and after a few seconds of thought, because the image and the reputation clashed so horribly, Mataji realised that she was looking at Caesar Clown.

"Yes, Mr. Clown. My name is Mataji Vinsmoke. And this is Kenji." Mataji stepped forward, her hand outstretched stubbornly. She wasn't going to let his toxic shroud prevent her from following the social niceties her father had forced her to adhere to all these years.

" _You_ are a Vinsmoke? But yes, I can see it now. Just like your father. I thought the Vinsmoke children were younger." It sounded more like an accusation than an observation, but Caesar stretched his hand outward anyway his toxic shroud thankfully receding enough for Mataji to shake his hand with little worry.

Caesar stepped back, allowing Mataji to follow inside. Kenji was close at her heels.

"I am tall for my age." Mataji answered amicably, looking around the sparse room in interest. There didn't appear to be much here that would signify that Caesar was taking up a long term experiment on Tequila Wolf.

"Shurororo, and Kenji was it? There's a bomb collar that can hold you?" Caesar chuckled loudly, shutting the door with a snap and dissipating.

"What?!" Mataji glanced around wildly, fists raised instantly and searching for an enemy that didn't appear to be attacking.

"Relax, young Vinsmoke. You are not in mortal danger." The word 'yet' hung in the air silently as Caesar materialised in a spindly chair next to an equally battered looking table. He gestured to the remaining chairs, which Mataji and Kenji took.

"'M surprised ye know've me." Kenji stretched his long legs under the table menacingly. Mataji listened intently, eyes darting from Kenji to Caesar eagerly. Kenji had yet to divulge much about his past, other than being a pirate whose father was also a pirate and mother a whore. Mataji had asked a few times, and each time Kenji had made a lame excuse not to talk about it, so Mataji had let the subject drop for fear of being so annoying that he would stop teaching her. And nothing in the library had any information on the man.

"Shurororo! Not many in certain circles don't." Caesar preened proudly, as if his ability to gossip was worthy of an inflation of ego.

"Ah. S'pose ye do know Vegapunk." This had not been the right thing for Kenji to say.

"As if my brilliance doesn't outshine his?! We shall see, oh yes… That old man works too hard to keep me from realising my full potential!" Caesar seethed, gas billowing dangerously about the room in his temper.

"Yes. It is biological and chemical warfare that you specialise in, isn't it?" Mataji interjected, changing the subject swiftly and sending a sharp 'be quiet' look to Kenji. It appeared as if today was not going to be the day she found out about his past.

Caesar paused mid rant, amber eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"What age did you say you were?"

"Ten."

"Hmph. I am surprised you have enough interest to know that, but I suppose being a Vinsmoke allows you to detect true genius when you see it!" Caesar praised himself, his expression twisting in his egomania. Mataji could feel Kenji stiffen at her side in revulsion, but she kept her expression blank.

"Yes, well it is your genius that is the reason my father sent me. Now, where are my manners? I have brought a gift for you, as kind as you are to host someone as young as I am." Mataji turned the sweetness up a notch, now convinced that as long as she was praising this man he would detect no falsehood. He seemed to enjoy it far too much.

"Oh, you _have_ been raised right, haven't you?! Of course, Jajji wouldn't send an inconsiderate brat." Caesar crowed delightedly as Mataji withdrew the small package from her jacket. She had wrapped it carefully while Kenji had taken his turn sailing, so it appeared as if more thought had been put into it than there had been. It helped that, having had little experience wrapping presents in years, the package was wrapped rather clumsily and it was obvious that she had done it herself.

A detail that would not pass by a man like Caesar.

Caesar, ignoring all social protocol, ripped the wrapping paper open and stared interestedly at the little spyglass for a few moments. Clearly he was happy enough with the contents even before understanding what it was, as he hummed happily as he picked it up and turned it on its side.

Mataji had been about to open her mouth to explain what it was, when Caesar let out a little gasp followed by a long laugh of 'Shurororo'. While distinctive, Mataji could see that laugh grating on her nerves soon enough.

"A void century spyglass? My, my. I am being spoiled." His expression was still happy, and he wasn't letting go of the spyglass, but his tone was now more cautious. Good. At least now any request wouldn't come as a surprise.

"We like to show our appreciation to those with more unorthodox gifts." Mataji said simply, bowing her head in increments as she had been shown before straightening up again. Caesar was watching her closely, a lot of the goofy persona that he had been exuding had been driven away with a few choice words. Good. It was Caesar the scientist that she wanted to converse with, not the psychopath.

"Hm… I understand why it was you he sent now. Even more than coming himself. You know your father has too much pride to be polite to someone like me?" Caesar was grinning, his point teeth making the expression look much more like a leer than a smile. Perhaps it was.

"My father has too much pride. Period." Mataji gambled, a trill of excitement down her spine when Caesar left out a short bark of laughter. These word games that her father had been training her for with their own word game… It was fun to her now.

"You have an interest in science? I assume you do, because a more humble nature than your father alone is not enough of a reason to send you." Caesar purred, but Mataji noticed he was still paying more attention to the silent Kenji than her. Curious.

"Yes, sir. I have been assisting my father in the Vinsmoke labs since I was very young." Mataji answered simply.

"You _are_ very young." Caesar snorted drolly and eyed her curiously again. "So? What made you choose this interest, when you were _very young_?" Caesar asked, perhaps a little cruelly in his tone. Mataji paid him little mind.

"The same that made you choose it, I suppose." Mataji answered lightly, but Caesar's face darkened.

"Chose? If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid." He answered haughtily, nose in the air. Mataji could not for the life of her understand why one of the world's most prominent scientists was complaining about his lot in life.

"Is this because of your dismissal?" Mataji asked bluntly, knowing it was a risk but wanting to clear the air more.

"Dismissal? Oh that, they've already called me back. They always do. They get uncomfortable of the scope of my experiments and put me 'on probation' when I step out of line. I am due back in _Vegapunk_ 's lab on Punk Hazard by the end of the month." Caesar was literally spitting poison now, so Mataji leaned back in her seat in an attempt to be as far from the source as possible.

"Oh, that's good." Mataji answered mildly, not wanting to ask any more questions. It was clear that Caesar was experimenting on people, on slaves, and the World Government were more than happy to allow this maniac to continue work under the most inspired scientist they have? They had to be crazy.

"Good for them, maybe." Caesar sulked, and Mataji thought she heard him grumble something about funding experiments. She didn't ask. She didn't want to know, because she thought she already did.

Jajji had said it himself, Caesar wasn't as useful with no direction. The chances that he would squander any funding directed at him alone were incredibly high. With Vegapunk running the lab and resources the experiments would continue to go ahead, as it was unlikely a man his age would have any particularly expensive vices that would interfere with scientific research.

Caesar Clown had a bit of a reputation for booze and women, and it was unlikely that he would prosper as much acting on his own.

"Mr. Clown, I am sure you have figured out the reason behind my father sending me here." Mataji cut to the chase, it was particularly hard to control a conversation where Caesar was concerned, as he had a tendency to ramble off point. She might as well just leap in.

"Shurororo! It has been obvious what you have wanted since your father first sent that letter, but you are not getting it. No matter how many trinkets you decide to bribe me with." Caesar guffawed, waving his hand through the hair and scattering his poison shroud lightly through the air.

"May I ask why?" Mataji blinked slowly as surprise and shock became evident on Caesar's face.

"W-why? What do you mean _why?!_ Because it's _mine_!" He hissed, slamming his fist on the table. Mataji noticed Kenji eying the curls of poison that spread from it with distaste.

"What a strange way for a scientist to behave." Mataji commented lightly, standing with a sigh. Caesar gaped again, clearly unbalanced by the turn in conversation.

"What?"

"What do you mean what? Scientists prosper only by publishing their work. How do you expect to get any money if you keep all your discoveries to yourself?" Mataji scoffed derisively, knowing in her mind that she was walking the fine line between manipulating and angering.

"I have already _chosen_ a customer, as soon as they match my price I-" Caesar snapped his mouth shut and glared at Mataji, who stared on innocently.

"It's not as if the World Government are your only options you know-" Mataji began,

"How did you-"

"After all, technically until you return to their employ at the end of the month you are a solitary researcher. You have no contractual obligation to sell to the World Governement, you know." Mataji spoke over Caesar lightly, who was looking unnerved.

"Do you have _any_ idea what would happen to me?" He whispered, but Mataji could hear the gears turning in his head.

"Nothing, probably. I'm not going to go blabbing to the World Government any time soon, and I'm fairly sure that's a commonality for all the Vinsmokes. Believe it or not, being the leaders of the underworld mercenaries do not endear you to the authorities, however they might enjoy pretending we work together because they know they can't control us. Should they ask something contradictory of what the Vinsmoke family wants, what is it that you think would happen?" Mataji's tone hadn't changed, despite the darker topic. Her higher childlike voice delivered dark news best when she allowed it to ring with the innocence that came with the age.

Caesar didn't respond, so Mataji sat back down and crossed her legs slowly, leaning back in her chair.

Caesar glanced up, eyes widening for a moment before scoffing.

"Are you aware just how alike your father you are?" The purple man sighed, getting to his feet now and breezing about the room, glancing at the pair before him every minute or so, sighing, and resuming his 'pacing'.

"I've been told." Mataji said, tilting her chin forward the way she had seen Jajji do when he was particularly stubborn. Adopting his mannerisms could work wonders when dealing with people familiar with him.

Caesar shook his head again and paced.

"What's'a verdict?" Kenji spoke for the first time since entering the room without being addressed first. Mataji actually jumped in surprise, he kept silnt as a general rule on these missions, she assumed because of some clash of ideals he held with the Vinsmoke family. Mataji scanned his face, it was rigid and she could see a vein pulsing at his temple. Mataji was confused as to what had made him so angry since sitting in the room.

"Shurororo, what do you think?" Caesar seemed to have come to himself again, any hint of being unsteady in his decision gone again.

"I think you are going to be a difficult customer, all intelligent men are." Mataji tried to soothe his ego. It only half worked. Mataji, who was more focused on finding out what was bothering Kenji, was listening intently but not to Caesar.

"Hmph, and like all intelligent men, I need to survive! How will my genius be appreciated by the world if I am dead and buried because I went too far against the World Government?!" Caesar growled, and his eyes were sure. Mataji believed she may have lost him in that moment.

But, and now that she was straining her ears, she could hear the guards' voices outside.

"Worthless…-rash! ….-uld kill you!" Now that Mataji had noticed it, it was all that she could hear. There was a guard outside giving a tongue lashing the likes of which she rarely heard, especially since Sanji had escaped the family.

"Mr. Clown, I believe it would be of benefit to discuss this further tomorrow. We do have time, after all, and I believe this is an important enough discussion that I would like you to sleep on it before making any rash decisions." Mataji advised, and Caesar's eyes narrowed but he didn't contradict her statement.

Caesar had been suspicious of them from the moment he had heard of their impending arrival, that much was clear. But now, with all his suspicions confirmed, the idea of the Vinsmoke ambassador spending the night on Tequila Wolf was making him downright nervous.

"I trust that the guards can have somewhere prepared?" Mataji continued, pretending that she had not noticed the downtrodden expression on Caesar's face.

Kenji was getting more and more uncomfortable next to her, clearly feeling guilty for ruining her groove, but bothered by whatever was going on outside. Despite Mataji's advanced hearing, she suspected that Kenji could hear more than she could.

"I am sure that they can. They are under World Government employ, and as you are my guest, a sought after government scientist, I am sure they can accommodate you." Caesar responded, stressing the word 'government' every time he spoke it.

"Thank you, that is most kind." Mataji smiled blandly and stood up, Kenji did the same but with barely concealed haste.

"Shurororo, _kind_ is it? A Vinsmoke through and through, you are. And I don't mean like those genetically engineered whelps your father has created. Oh yes, don't look so surprised, of course I know. No, you are too calculating to be one of them. Like your father, and his." Caesar laced his fingers together on the table, inspecting the ceiling now. Mataji paused as she opened the door.

"You knew my grandfather?" She asked incredulously, Caesar was surely still in his thirties, and Jajji's father had died before Jajji himself had been born. Caesar's head snapped around, clearly insulted.

"How old do I _look_?! And to think I thought you intelligent. No, I did not _know_ him but your grandfather's reputation was similar to your father's." Caesar growled as Mataji stepped out the door with a brief 'oh'. She closed the door behind herself and Kenji with a firm click.

It probably wasn't a good thing that so many people were comparing her to two of the most ruthless and cruel men of the past century.

Mataji looked across the stone floor of the bridge to where a guard stood over a bloody corpse, red seeping into the frost around it and the air smelling distinctly of copper. Kenji was frozen, muscles locked tight in an emotion that Mataji couldn't identify. She doubted there was a single word that could encapsulate what Kenji was feeling.

"Has your business concluded?" The guard that had delivered them to Caesar's door had apparently not gotten bored and wandered off once they were inside. He had waited diligently, and Mataji noticed that he was moving his feet almost imperceptibly on the icy floor to keep them warm. While he was wearing the same uniform as the man currently smearing a slave's blood across the floor mere yards away, Mataji found that she couldn't bring herself to feel guilty about it.

He did catch her watching them though.

"I thought that being born in a family of assassins you would be used to the sight of severed heads." Mataji was about to interject and say that the slave's head was not severed when a dull thunk reverberated around the street. Mataji glanced the slave's way again and noticed that not only was the corpse battered and bloody, but now its head was rolling across the floor with blood sputtering from the stump.

Mataji thought the blood looked almost pretty against the snow, but kept that comment to herself for fear of Kenji losing it. She brushed against his side once more before responding in that same overly-light tone that she had been using on Caesar.

"Oh no, severed heads never go out of fashion. Used sparingly and with artistic sensibility, they can make a point a great deal more eloquently than those still attached." Especially his, Mataji thought nastily, but not letting the emotion of her thoughts leak into her bright expression.

The ten year old's thoughts on murder unnerved even the guard enough to start walking, leading the pair away from the scene of the brutal murder.

"I'm a fucking coward." Kenji growled as they moved further away, his hands clenched so hard that Mataji could make out the white of his knuckles.

"Maybe." Mataji jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the slaves's corpse. "That might be a hero. Tell me who's better off." Her words were callous, and she knew Kenji sent her an odd look for her words, but she kept her eyes trained on the guard escorting him.

Kenji must have listened to her silent warning. Not here. Not where they could be overheard.

"You can stay here. You are not to leave unescorted, try not to need to leave until daylight." The guard opened the door of a grey slab not dissimilar to the one that Caesar was residing within, but with one big difference. There were windows on theirs. Which meant only one thing, seeing as they were more of a nuisance to Tequila Wolf than an asset like Caesar was.

They were to be watched carefully.

"Thank you." Mataji responded with dignity, not showing that she had come to any such realisation, and walking promptly through the door of their new abode.

"Ah Kenji, they actually gave us two beds." Mataji laughed in false delight, beckoning the large man in after her, and hint of desperation in her voice when she noticed Kenji looming over the guard who looked troubled but defiant. His eyes kept flickering confidently to Kenji's bomb collar.

Eventually, and much too slowly, Kenji followed Mataji into the cement block, slamming the door viciously behind him and ignoring the guard's startled cry.

"Was that really necessary?" Mataji sighed, flopping onto the bed closest to her with resignation, sure that now they were out of company that Kenji would have a lot more to say.

"I-"

"Wait, back to the window and keep your voice at speaking level. They're not going to be able to hear you or lip read that way." Mataji interjected quickly, and upon seeing the affronted expression on Kenji's face, muttered her apologies and for him to continue.

Kenji slid into position with his back to the window and immediately began to hiss.

"What was all that crap back there? Severed heads? Threatenin' slaves? This… this… THIS!" Kenji exploded on his last word, ignoring Mataji's hurried shushing motions. He sat down on the floor, clearly bothered.

"I don't like any of this either, Kenji. But there's nothing we can do. The two of us can't take on an entire country, small as it is, especially when you're wearing a bomb collar! We need to stay _safe_ if we're going to leave." Mataji groaned, her arm over her face now to hide her words. She didn't want to turn to face the wall.

"But you… You… You didn't _care_!" Kenji exclaimed plaintively, almost childishly. Mataji was distinctly reminded that including her ages from both this world and her last if she wasn't older than Kenji she was definitely damn near the same age.

"Kenji. I do _care_. I do. But I'm not good with emotions. I'm not good at dealing with them, so I put them away for later. Is it healthy? No. Is it better than being killed because I tried to save one person? Yes. I think I prefer the idea of one person dying to two people, and don't even try and pretend that we wouldn't die too." Mataji said quickly, all in one breath, before sitting up and glaring furiously at the man who had accused her.

Mataji glanced up and saw a guard standing off in the distance through the window. She couldn't be sure, but chances are he was wearing goggles. Mataji flopped back down onto the bed and folded her arm over her face with a groan.

"I hate this place." She sighed.

"Me too." Kenji responded quietly.

"Are you going to tell me what's been bothering you so much? I can't pinpoint exactly when it happened but by the time we were in Caesar's place you were completely off. I don't think it was just the slave." Mataji said carefully, trying to even out her tone.

"Just?" Mataji could hear the acid dripping in Kenji's tone.

"Kenji. Please." Mataji whined, not wanting to take him on in pedantic phrasing now that she was finally away from the rest of Tequila Wolf.

"I ain't gonna tell ya." Kenji said stubbornly, but dropping the sanctimonious act he had been about to partake in.

"Then how about you just tell me some of it? You don't have to go into any specifics. You don't even have to talk about what specifically bothered you here. Just talk and get it out of your system before we sneak out tonight or we'll get caught." Mataji groaned rolling on her side to face the wall now, both losing patience and assuming that it would be easier for Kenji that way.

"We're gonna sneak out?" Kenji asked excitedly, cheer evident in his voice.

"Of course. Father said if we can't get anything out of Caesar himself we should see if we can find something ourselves." Mataji replied, yawning.

"Well?"

Kenji hesitated, but was clearly too happy to be breaking Tequila Wolf's rules now to complain.

"I've fought'n three wars," he began. "In seven pitched battles. In countless raids an' skirmishes an' desperate defences, and bloody actions of ev'ry kind. I've fought in'a driving snow, the blasting wind, the middle of the night. I've been fightin' all my life, one enemy or 'nuther, one friend or 'nuther. I've known little else. I've seen men killed for a word, for a look, for nothin' at all. A woman tried to stab me once for killin' her husband, an' I threw her down a well. And that's far from the worst of it. Life used'a be cheap as dirt to me. Cheaper.

"I've fought countless single combats and I won 'em all 'cept my last one, but I fought on the wrong side an' for all the wrong reasons. I've been ruthless, an' brutal, an' a coward. I've stabbed men in the back, burned 'em, drowned 'em, crushed 'em with rocks, killed 'em asleep, unarmed, or runnin' away. I've run away myself more'n once. I've pissed myself with fear. I've begged for my life. I've been wounded, often, an' badly, an' screamed an' cried like a baby whose mother took 'er tit away. I've no doubt the world would be a better place if I'd been killed years ago, but I haven't been, and I don't know why."

He looked down at his hands, pink and clean on the grey concrete floor. "There are few men with more blood'n their hands than me. None, that I know of. They hate me, my enemies, and there's a lot of 'em. Always more enemies, and fewer friends. Blood gets you nuthin' but more blood. It follows me now, like my shadow, and like my shadow I can never be free of it. 'Specially not with the Vinsmokes. I should never be free of it. I've earned it. I've deserved it. I've sought it out. 'S my punishment." Kenji said heavily, and now that Mataji turned to look at him again she saw that his eyes were gaunt and hollow.

"And I thought this would be something important." Mataji said, watching as Kenji's face marred with confusion. Even anger would be better than that sadness.

"Kenji, haven't you realised it yet? We're all monsters here."


	7. The Headless Horseman II

Astrasia: Thanks for all the kind reviews!

In response to DemonCatLady, I have only decided Mataji's height as far as she will definitely be the tallest of her siblings. Yonji is the tallest in canon at 6"4 and a half, so she will be a minimum 6"5 when fully grown. I'd like to make her the same height as Jajji, but as his height has yet to be disclosed I'll decide once I get that info! At the moment at ten years old she'd be roughly 5"7/5"8.

Note that NONE of the characters introduced in this chapter are OCs! They are all minor canon characters.

* * *

Even though darkness fell early on Tequila Wolf, especially when helped along by the thick sea mist still wafting over the edge of the bridge, it was several hours before Mataji felt as if enough time had passed that the guard's attention may have lapsed enough for an attempt to be made.

Kenji had opened the window during the first hour, feigning warmth in their room that wasn't there, to maintain an air of normalcy for when the opened window would be needed later. They had scanned the room for an escape route for hours that was feasible for them both, but except for the door the narrow window was the only option.

The floor was solid stone, an unusual choice for a nomadic country, but that was likely the reason for the multitude of abandoned camps that they had passed along the wall. The buildings were built for sturdiness not portability.

"Don't like this." Kenji grumbled, his back to Mataji as he stared out the second window with his eyes trained on the two guards standing mere yards away.

"You don't have to. I have to at least try." Mataji shrugged on her lightly mottled grey body suit, it was best for city camouflage but the ice and snow littered sparsely across the bridge-top could make that a bit more complicated. She would have to stick to the walls as much as she can.

"Yer ten." Kenji grumbled, crossing his arms. Mataji pulled a matching glove onto her hand and examined the window again. There was no way that Kenji's broad frame would fit through that.

"I'm a Vinsmoke."

"Barely."

"Shush. I'll be back in a while." Mataji pulled on her second glove with a wry grin. Kenji was bristling indignantly, but was showing no signs of turning around. Good.

"I'm ready." Mataji murmured, tucking her bright hair into the built in hood and face mask of the camouflage suit.

"So're they. Gi'us a few…" Kenji growled and Mataji could picture his expression without needing to see it. His already angular eyes would be even more so because of his squinting through the dark, brows furrowed, and a downturned petulant mouth.

Mataji stifled a chuckle and waited, bracing herself for immediate movement whenever Kenji gave the go ahead.

Seconds turned into minutes, turned into almost half an hour before there was even a slight let up in the guard. Mataji's legs were quivering from holding herself in such a strict position when Kenji's voice finally croaked out into the room –

"Now."

-and Mataji propelled herself forward with strong legs characteristic of the Vinsmoke siblings. She couldn't see out the window clearly from as far back as she had been standing, which was the point. They couldn't see her either. It was pure trust in Kenji that allowed Mataji to leap through the window and sprint hard to the wooden boxes piled against a dwelling opposite theirs.

Mataji leaped over the side of the box and stilled herself quickly and efficiently.

If they had seen her…

Mataji waited with bated breath for one, two, five, seven minutes before she allowed herself to breathe normally again. She had escaped detection. Somehow.

She peeked over the edge of the box she was crouched behind and stared at the dwelling from which she had escaped. Kenji was standing scowling out the window. His eyes were squinting, his brows furrowed, and his mouth downturned. Mataji only just managed to hold in the giggle that threatened to escape before she reminded herself of the situation.

And so, Mataji braced herself against the cold. She was thankful that her suit allowed a decent temperature regulation. While she was chilly, she was nowhere near as cold as the guards had been.

She slunk out from behind the box, ensuring that she was standing flush against the hard grey wall behind her. As long as she stuck to walls, it was unlikely that her camouflage would be seen through unless someone was standing close. After all, it was only Mataji's eyes and a sliver of skin surrounding them that were exposed from the suit.

Mataji paused whenever any sound reached her ears that was atypical of night time Tequila Wolf, which was difficult to do when the mist and snow muffled any sound soft enough to be wary of. Had Jajji not engineered their senses to be superior to that of a normal human, Mataji was sure that she would have been caught already.

The time that passed seemed much longer than the reality. Mataji glanced up at the hazy outline of the moon through the clouds every now and then, reassuring herself that there were still hours left in the night. It felt as if she were running on borrowed time for some reason.

Mataji had stared for mere seconds at the faded remains of red from the decapitated slave as she passed by, but it felt as if she had wasted hours by doing so.

Mataji slunk expertly beyond Caesar's dwelling, knowing that that bare room would hold little, if any, information.

It was the research facility, housed mere meters beyond Caesar's abode, that would hold what she sought.

It was innocuous enough a building that when Mataji had been led past it earlier that day, she had not recognised it for what it was. It looked identical to each of the other dreary buildings on Tequila Wolf, if only a little larger. Whenever research had been mentioned, Caesar had unconsciously looked in this direction – and while the size of the lab may make it seem as if there was little to hide, it was what she had overheard that finalised her suspicions.

"How are we going to get Caesar's stuff down there?" Two guards had been complaining about three large metallic canisters filled with a liquid that sloshed about noisily. The significance of what they had said didn't strike Mataji until much later, when she had been pondering the thickness of the bridge.

Even though the bridge traversed the ocean, and was designed to bear the full weight of heavy traffic and dwellings, there was little necessity to have it as ridiculously thick as it currently was. It was a waste of supplies. And while watch towers _were_ strewn along the bridge top at intervals, they were not nearly frequent enough to be effective.

Mataji couldn't be sure, as the mist had been thick at the time, but she was almost certain that she had seen shadowed marks on the side of the bridge as they had been sailing to the nearest dock. There was a distinct possibility that they were slitted hollows, narrow enough to get a view but not enough to let a lot of cold in.

The chances that Caesar's lab, located at the leftmost point of the bridge, was located beneath the surface in a hollowed out room was too high to ignore. It allowed for privacy, which was ranked pretty high in importance when you were an assistant to Vegapunk… on forced temporary leave or not.

Mataji curled her fingers experimentally, cocking her head to the side and observing the dwelling in question. Not that it did her any good. Just like in Caesar's home, there were no windows. It was a cube of smooth unforgiving grey.

But how to get in? There was nobody around. It was highly unlikely that a known philanthropist like Caesar would work through the night, making it even unlikelier for any deliveries or messengers that Mataji could intercept to pass by.

Mataji allowed minutes to tick by, glancing over her shoulder at where Caesar was most likely asleep with a silent snarl.

She checked every rooftop, eyes flicking from one to the next and not moving on until she was sure she could both hear and see no one.

Deserted.

What would Mataji's siblings do? Mataji tried to reason with the knot of panic in her gut, knowing that there was much less of a choice in what her next actions would be than there seemed. There was an easy answer to that question after all. Indisputably, each of the Vinsmoke siblings excepting Mataji would already have gone through that door like a bat out of hell.

' _Yes, but if that was needed this time they would be here, not me.'_ Mataji frowned, twitching with every second that passed by and trying to come to a logical conclusion.

No windows, little chance of anyone entering or even passing by. Mataji didn't like guesswork, like Jajji she was a being of defined logic and reason and assumptions didn't sit well with her. Well, not only like Jajji. There had been scientists in her old world aplenty who had paved the way for the likes of her. She was nothing special there.

' _But here, you are.'_ The voice in her head came unbidden, and so suddenly that Mataji almost jumped in fright and craned her neck to see who spoke before she realised she had thought it herself.

Mataji stared stumped at the offending door, mind swirling.

It was true. In this world, it often seemed as if logic had no place. The world was made almost entirely of water, and the rest insanity. Fruit that gave people superpowers, mermaids, fishmen, giants, dwarves. Where on earth did a scientist fit in?

' _Where you need to. The others can't plan as well as you can. Sanji definitely wouldn't be alive now if it weren't for your mind. It is necessary, your mind, especially here, but not now.' _

"But not now." Mataji whispered in a voice barely audible to herself, and cleared her mind as best she could.

And. She. Moved.

Mataji sprang forward after one last cursory glance around to make sure there were no eyes looking in her direction and moved faster than she thought she ever had. Her heart hammered louder than ever as she swung the door open, jumped through, and snapped it shut as silently as she could while still being fast.

In the split second between the opening and closing of the door, Mataji had seen enough of the bare room inside to know that she had no company. She let out a sigh of relief and fumbled in her waist belt which was surprisingly difficult given the pitch darkness of the room.

Eventually, her eager fingers closed around a candle and a match. It took a few tries, but eventually Mataji managed to light the match off the stone walls and then the candle, throwing the room into an eerie focus.

Mataji blinked slowly, allowing her eyes to adjust before realising there was nothing to see. The entire room was empty. No furnishings. Just the blank grey walls and a single wooden hatch in the middle of the equally grey floor.

Mataji suppressed a grin. It appeared that nobody was even slightly concerned about being obvious. Luckily for her.

She inspected the groove surrounding the hatch, worrying about the tiny sliver of light she could see when standing above. Mataji shook herself abruptly. Not now.

The hatch didn't make a sound as it was swung open, its appearance was new so that was hardly a surprise. Mataji peered down, a rickety ladder was jutting out the top, and what little light was down there was not enough to bring whatever was below into view.

Mataji climbed down carefully, but easily. She pulled the hatch back down to cover the exit after discerning that there was no lock. The Vinsmoke training sessions made the descent easy even with one hand holding the candle, and it didn't take long before Mataji's feet reached the floor with a resound 'pat'.

Candle raised above her head, Mataji surveyed the room open-mouthed. It had indeed been built in as a feature of the bridge, the stone smoothly transitioning from floor to wall as any room would. This was not hollowed out for Caesar's use, it was definitely built in. Mataji's stomach lurched.

There were not enough dwellings built above ground for the sheer number of slaves that she had seen. They kept people in these tiny enclosed rooms.

Mataji focused, driving the subject from her mind, and looked around.

Indeed, the small amount of light visible from above the hatch had come from a slitted hole in the wall. The view beyond, had the mist been lighter, would have been beautiful and Mataji could hear the ocean from here.

This sliver of light added to the candle threw the room into enough focus that Mataji could see an enormous silver vat standing at the rear of the room, the letters SAD emblazoned across it in bold font and a nuclear symbol above that. Two tall cylinders were on either side of the vat, attached to it by several tubes and bubbling ominously.

"Well, I'm in the right place." Mataji murmured, almost sarcastically as she looked sceptically at the vat.

Sighing, Mataji looked around the room. A large wooden desk holding a small metal cage and with several drawers was pushed against the opposite wall, and a test bench next to that. Mataji recognised some of the solutions on the bench by their chemical symbols, which were oddly the same as they had been in her previous world. It made for an easier scientific transition. There was hydrochloric acid, methyl bromide, sulphuric acid, digoxin… And oddly some plants and mushrooms that for the most part Mataji couldn't recognise apart from aconite and water hemlock. Stacks upon stacks of disorganised papers stood in teetering piles on this bench next to what were probably all very dangerous toxins and Mataji couldn't help but feel her stomach lurch in disbelief that such a renowned scientist would abide by such horrific scientific practice.

But then, ethics and regulations were much less of a concern here. But still. It rankled with her that a man perceived as highly intelligent would…

"Stop it." Mataji groaned to herself.

"Stop what?"

Mataji jumped and span around, arms waving widely as she turned and eyes wide with madness. She scanned the room, frowning upon seeing nobody there.

There was nobody in the room. Unless…

Mataji crept towards the wooden table in disbelief, her eyes not straying from the small metal cage in which a small figure was becoming more and more clear.

"Hello." It said chirpily, large eyes brimming with curiosity.

"Hello." Mataji responded slowly, frowning at the little creature who seemed ecstatic to be sitting in a cage.

"Are you a good human or a bad one?" It asked eagerly, leaning forward to hear Mataji's answer. Despite the voice being rather more high pitched than that of a regular human's, Mataji noticed that it was most definitely male.

"Eh… What?" Mataji spluttered, trying to shake the shock from her system as what was clearly a dwarf swung to and fro on a small bird swing.

"Are you a good human or a bad one?" His little voice seemed harder now, more suspicious.

"Eh… Good? I think? Mostly." Mataji answered, deciding this as the best course of action whether she believed her words to be true or not. The sudden delight in the dwarf's features told her that her guess was a good one as his tail bristled happily.

He was adorable. His enormous brown afro topped with goggles was just as tufty as his matching tail, he had tiny matching overalls and a pointed nose. He was also smiling happily in her direction.

"Oh, good! So you promise not to tell anyone that I'm down here then?"

"…Sure."

"Great! Now I don't have to kill you, hahahahahaha!" The laughter trilled innocently about the room, but Mataji was sure the little creature wasn't joking.

"Why would you have to kill me?" She asked curiously, wondering why he was giving information so freely when he immediately brightened and began to speak.

"Because humans can't know that the Tontatta tribe exist! We're from Green Bit, and even the locals think we're fairies!" He announced proudly, puffing out his chest as Mataji stared disbelievingly at him.

There was not a single person with knowledge of the Grand Line that believed the 'fairies' of Dressrosa were anything but dwarves. The locals called them 'fairies' as a fond nickname, but Mataji never believed it would be to placate the dwarves themselves.

"Really?" Mataji asked, keeping her tone bright and lacing it with the right amount of awe.

"Yup. We're masters of disguise, and super fast. Regular people can't even see us!" He threw back his head and laughed.

"Excuse me for asking, but then why are you in a cage?" Mataji feigned a gasp, growing more curious as the dwarf shook his head vigorously.

"Oh no, oh no, I'm not _trapped_ here." And with those words he stuck his tiny arms out and gripped either side of the bars and wrenched hard. They creaked and gave way under the impressive strength the dwarf seemed to have, Mataji was impressed.

The dwarf hopped out of the cage with a dramatic flair and bowed, Mataji clapped accordingly trying very hard to keep a sincere expression on her face.

"If youre not trapped, then why?" She began, but was interrupted quickly by the brown haired dwarf.

"Ah let me tell you the Tontatta tribe's tale of woe~"

"You really don't-"

"A mere two weeks ago, Donquixote Doflamingo returned to Dressrosa. It was just in time to, because Riku Dold III began acting very, very strangely. He used to be such a kind man, but he went mad with greed. It was very sad. But! Doflamingo came, and even though it was scary at the time, he took five hundred of us from the Tontatta tribe to help make SMILE. Which you get from SAD. It turns out, our good and kind-hearted princess, Mansherry, is very ill! So the kind Doflamingo is keeping the princess alive for us while we work hard to make SMILE! Because SMILE is the only thing that will make Mansherry better!" At this, the little dwarf punched the air in determination and Mataji stared blankly at him.

There was no way… No way that this little guy was really that stupid was there?

"Doflamingo… The pirate? With a reputation for manipulation and twisted murder methods?" Mataji clarified, rubbing her temples in irritation.

"Yes. Such a kind, caring man. A good human, too. He told us so." The dwarf nodded, not seeing the contradiction between the two descriptions in the slightest.

"I guess, since you're supposed to make SMILE, you're here to help Caesar make enough SAD first?" Mataji sighed, deciding to ignore the rest of it for now.

"Yes. Until we get Punk Hazard back up and running as the main SAD facility. Caesar, he's a good human too you'd like him, had an accident and blew up that part of the lab. Nobody was hurt though! So Doctor Vegapunk sent us away to work for a little bit, so Caesar came here." His high voice said confidently, still clearly not seeing anything wrong with how this story was playing out.

"Did Doctor Vegapunk know that you were there? On Punk Hazard?" Mataji asked curiously, not able to ignore the one blatantly obvious gaping hole in the story.

"Oh, no. Caesar said I should hide because Vegapunk is deathly afraid of dwarves! He passes out instantly, and I would ruin an entire day of work if Vegapunk ever saw me." A firm nod accompanied the blatantly obvious lie.

Mataji mulled this over. This made a lot more sense. Vegapunk, who had a reputation as a kind man if nothing else, would definitely not support the slavery of dwarves by Doflamingo. He wouldn't support a man like Doflamingo at all, in fact. So Caesar was obviously keeping this business transaction a secret from his more public employer.

"Does Vegapunk know that you're still making SAD?" Mataji asked, disappointed when a shrug was the only answer she got.

"What's your name?" Mataji asked, looking the little dwarf in the eye warmly as he perked right up again. Stupid or not, the dwarves were extremely cute.

"Chao!"

"What? No, I'm not leaving yet." Mataji waved her arms as the little dwarf laughed.

"No, my _name_ is Chao. You know, I'm glad I met you. What's your name?" Chao asked excitedly, his little arms flailing in excitement.

"My name? It's… Mayu." Mataji cursed herself for the terrible made up name. Even if that was relayed to Caesar there was little chance that he wouldn't guess who it was. If Jajji ever learned of this he would

 _(Author's note: Mayu, and Mayuge, mean eyebrow(s) in Japanese)_

"Ma…yu?" Chao asked, staring bluntly at her curled eyebrows in wonderment as to how any parent could be so cruel.

"Yes." Mataji said firmly, still cursing herself inwardly as Chao's face broke into a bright grin and he laughed.

"Hahaha, we both have pretty weird names!" He chortled, taking one look at Mataji's eyebrows before beginning again. Honestly, Mayu wasn't even an unusual name if anyone else had it. It had other meanings too, nice ones when given to a girl. But not so much when that girl had large curling eyebrows.

"Haha, yes we do." Mataji laughed in a strained sort of way before changing the subject rapidly.

"Does Caesar keep any sort of important notes down here? Specifically about SAD?" Mataji asked, knowing that she hadn't the time to go through the huge pile of papers on the test bench.

"Why?" Chao asked simply, not suspicious yet but tilting his head to the side curiously.

"Oh? I'm doing a project on Caesar. My teacher asked me to learn everything I can about him." Mataji chirped sweetly as Chao's face beamed up at her.

"Oh school is important! Let me help!" And with that he walked to the edge of the desk and swing his little legs over the side and kicked lightly so the drawer popped open. He hopped inside and began humming for a few seconds.

"Hm… There is sometimes a little book in here that he writes in sometimes, but there's no sign of it now! Maybe he took it with him to do some late night work." Chao chirped as he hopped back out of the drawer with a grin.

Shit.

"Ah… Thank you so much for your help, Chao. I wouldn't have found out half as much without you." Mataji said sincerely, giving a light bow as Chao blushed with pride. She wouldn't let him see her disappointment. While she had yet to find out anything solid about the manufacture of SAD, she had still found out a lot of valuable infor-…

"Chao? You said you help Caesar make the SAD, right?" Mataji asked wonderingly, not believing that this was only occurring to her now.

"Um… Kind of." Chao nodded proudly, as if he had actually answered her question.

"What do you mean, kind of?" Mataji asked, trying not to let an edge into her tone.

"Oh, well only Caesar knows how to _actually_ make it. It's his devil fruit ability. Like Leo has! It involves… er… what is it?" Chao scratched his head looking utterly bewildered. Mataji was more confused as to what Chao's purpose was at all in the lab if not to actually make the damn thing.

"Lin… eh…. Linie…." Chao started kneading his little knuckles into his hair in frustration but something clicked in Mataji's head.

"It's not… The Lineage Factor is it?" She whispered, eyes wide and staring at the dwarf who suddenly looked ecstatic.

"Yeah! That's it! So Caesar uses the devil fruit and Linnie Factor, and I carry the stuff!" Chao announced proudly, puffing his chest out impressively.

"Oh, er, that stuff must be very heavy." Mataji responded softly, mind racing with possibilities.

"Yes, but we of the Tontatta tribe can lift – " But that was all that Chao had a chance to say before a soft snick was heard above their heads.

Mataji froze in horror. That was the sound of the main door opening overhead.

"Chao, listen to me. Please. Ok, so Caesar is really afraid of curly eyebrows, did you know that? And he knows my family have them so even our description can make him deathl afraid and faint. Just like Doctor Vegapunk and dwarves. So you have to make sure you don't mention me at all, alright? Can you do that?" Mataji asked desperately as she turned her head one way and another trying desperately to find a hiding spot as the footsteps above moved closer to the hatch. The table was backless, the vat was pushed directly against the wall… Where?!

"REALLY?!" Chao gasped, eyes wide with curiosity.

"Yes, now do you promise?" Mataji snapped, her eyes settling on the slitted window with trepidation. She was still ten years old, however tall she was she was still narrow and hadn't filled out much.

"Yes, of course!" Chao gasped, shocked by the 'revelation'.

Mataji had to have blind faith in Chao's gullibility as she balanced precariously on what passed for a windowsill and pressed her face to the gap. It was a tight fit, but she managed to ease her head through the window as the hatch upstairs opened. The jangle of the metal handle being the only sound as the hinges were silent.

Low grumbling could be heard as whoever it was descended the ladder with more difficulty than Mataji had.

Mataji's shoulders were partly out now as she shimmied sideways, the only thing stopping her from plummeting to an icy death the foot that she had hooked around the windowsill.

Her entire torso was out now. The climbing sounds were nearing the bottom now.

Mataji forced herself not to look down as she placed both of her hands on the outer ledge of the windowsill and tilted forward, forward, forward, until she was in a strange contorted handstand. She inched forward. The steps grew louder. She curled her legs over her shoulders. The steps grew closer.

And then she toppled in a backwards somersault out the window with a gasp of relief, fingers clutched to the outer ledge with her back to the bridge and facing the horizon. She was hanging low, safe in the knowledge that she was unlikely to be discovered and breathed a sigh of relief as the sound of footsteps turned with a shuffled sound and presumably faced the room.

"Hey, dwarf, what are you doing out of your cage?" It wasn't Caesar's voice, belatedly Mataji realised of course it wasn't. With his gaseous form it was highly unlikely that he would bother climbing down the stairs the old fashioned way.

"Oh, I had too much energy so I wanted a walk." Chao responded chirpily and Mataji realised, a little late, that there was no reason for Chao to lie to anyone except Caesar with the promise that she had enforced. She was lucky that Chao seemed to grasp the underlying rule of 'don't tell anyone'. Or perhaps the little dwarf simply didn't like whoever had entered.

"Get back in there then!" The voice, female as far as Mataji could tell, snarled and Mataji could hear the fast pattering of little feet accompanied by the creaking of metal. Chao had evidently bent the bars back into shape.

The woman paced the room a few times and didn't seem to notice anything out of place because moments later Mataji could hear her footsteps leave the room again and begin the ascent to the bridge top.

Mataji let out a sigh of relief as soon as the hatch closed but froze soon after. There was no way she was going to get as lucky leaving the lab as she had entering. Mataji looked to her left, slightly above her position there was another window in jumping distance.

Mataji pulled herself back up onto the windowsill, both feet planted comfortably and knees bent in a crouch as both of her hands gripped either side of the window.

"Thank you for all your help, Chao. Good luck making the SMILE for your princess." Mataji said guiltily, as Chao's face broke out in a wide grin and he nodded from inside his little cage. She wanted to help but there was no way Caesar would miraculously not notice what looked to be his only assistant going missing. Easier to at least leave Chao with the impression that he was doing good than explain in the time she had.

Mataji braced her legs and pushed hard enough to launch herself into the air, not thinking of the icy drop below as her fingertips caught hold of the upper ledge. She listened for a moment. She could hear no breathing or rustling from within, and so hauled herself up on the ledge to begin again. With this strategy, it was mere minutes before Mataji's fingers were enclosed around the edge of the top of the bridge itself.

And with extra care, and more luck, Mataji had made it back into the dwelling that she was sharing with Kenji. He stared curiously at Mataji as she began to shake her head. Now was not the time to panic.

"I got all we need. We have to leave." Mataji whispered, looking up at Kenji who now had a proud expression on his face until he looked at her empty arms questioningly. It didn't take long to fill him in, Kenji had always been able to operate on minimal information.

But all the same, by the time Mataji had finished enlightening Kenji and finished changing out of her camouflage gear the sun was in the sky. The mist had lifted for now.

It had taken some explaining, but Mataji had managed to convince the guards outside that a good night's sleep had brought her to her senses (here she could see them eying the growing bags under her eyes in disbelief) and that it was unlikely that Caesar would relinquish any information that the Vinsmokes might consider valuable.

Any offer to meet with Caesar she turned down firmly with a quip of 'I must be moving along, my father always expects business to be fast you know', which shut the guards right up. None of them wanted to come face to face with Jajji Vinsmoke if they could help it.

Mataji and Kenji had made it farther than she thought they would by the time Caesar actually made an appearance. They were approaching the perimeter of Tequila Wolf, walking surely past groups of slaves as Caesar's laugh echoed down the street.

"Shurororo, well, well, the little Vinsmoke has less guts than I thought." Caesar's fashion sense had not improved in the twenty four hours since Mataji had seen him last. His face was smug, expression overly triumphant considering she was a mere ten years old.

"Or perhaps a better read on people than you thought. I was not going to get any information out of you, Caesar Clown." Mataji inclined her head politely, Caesar did the same out of reflex and shook himself irritably.

"You're not staying to appreciate my work? I study things other than SAD and SMILE you know." Caesar actually had the audacity to look annoyed, but Mataji realised it was more because even this psychopath before her could acknowledge that his mind was an unusual one. And Mataji, eccentric herself for the world they lived in, was as close to a similar mind as he likely came to on a day to day basis. It was lonely, having an interest in things nobody else seemed to be. If nothing else his tone was confirmation that Chao had kept his mouth shut so far.

"Yes, and frankly I personally find those things more interesting than SAD and SMILE. If not for my father's expectations, I would stay for as long as my curiosity would allow." Mataji assured him, surprised to find that she actually wasn't lying.

Caesar, for however evil he may be, was a fascinating man and invented morbidly fascinating things.

"Humph, of course you would! I _am_ a genius after all, shurorororo!" Caesar threw his head back and laughed loudly, calling the attention of the group of slaves to the left that had had Kenji's full attention for the duration of their conversation so far.

"K-Ken? Is that you? Ken? KEN! You gotta help me!" One of the slaves, eyes bulging from their sockets, threw himself forward and tried to crawl towards the trio standing near the border.

The slave had long unkempt blonde hair and thick eyebrows, but it was his scar that ran from his forehead to his eye that was his most noticeable feature. Or rather, it would be a scar. Because right now it was freshly bleeding.

"Kenji?" Mataji asked lowly, placing a hand on Kenji's arm as a guard approached the slave and kicked him hard in admonishment. Kenji's eyes were oddly blank as he responded,

"Byron. Our musician." Mataji understood instantly, though it didn't appear that Caesar did. Or if he did, he didn't care.

The man being kicked into the ground had been the musician of the pirate crew Kenji had once been part of. No wonder he was so out of sorts here.

"We have to go." Mataji said firmly, knowing how unkind she was being. Logic first, feeling later.

"I know." But Kenji remained rooted to the spot, his hand had reached up to gently touch his bomb collar as his eyes remained wide and his hands shaking.

"Kenji." Mataji said sharply, drawing the man's gaze instantly who blinked several times slowly before giving a single nod. But Kenji didn't speak as he turned his back on his once crewmate who was screaming for him in both desperation and rage.

"Shurororo." Caesar chuckled softly, but didn't seem to have anything to add. He placed his hands on his hips, causing the gas cloak to billow about him ominously before he opened his mouth again.

"For a brat, _especially_ a Vinsmoke brat, you're not the worst. If you ever want to learn _real_ science, not the shit your father does, I would welcome you to our lab. I'm sure Vegapunk would like having someone young about the place." Caesar's voice only sounded slightly bitter at the mention of his employer this time, and Mataji had to force herself to smile in response to his request. It was difficult to remember what a psychopath Caesar was sometimes.

"Thank you, that offer is most kind." Mataji bowed in thanks before straightening up again. Caesar seemed pleased by her acknowledgement of his prowess and seemed to be gloating internally.

Mataji glanced towards Byron once more, who was currently being dragged away by his hair and was flailing still calling for Kenji.

Kenji's face was whiter than she had ever seen it, and remained that colour as they left Tequila Wolf on their small boat.

The further they got from that cursed bridge the more Kenji seemed to ease, but Mataji bit her tongue. She knew, deep down, that Kenji would blame her for all that had happened on that bridge.

Mataji adjusted the mainsail as Kenji sat in total silence on the floor. She squinted, the temperature was rising drastically the further they sailed from the bridge and they were making incredible time considering they had been sailing a mere six hours. The wind was coming from directly behind them.

But… What was that? Mataji screwed up her face, keeping her eyes peeled on the dot on the horizon that was becoming clearer and clearer the closer they got.

It looked like… a large _pink_ ship.


	8. Under the Sea

Guys I have FANART! Drawn by the absolutely amazing DemonCatLady, these are available for viewing on her Tumblr, opsaywut, and are absolutely spot on. Give her blog a look, it convinced me to finally join Tumblr myself!

And thanks everyone for all the kind reviews!

Note that NONE of the characters introduced in this chapter are OCs! They are all minor canon characters.

* * *

Mataji stared, not quite believing what she was seeing. Sure, she was finally in the East Blue again for the first time in months, possibly a year. But she had not in her wildest dreams expected…

 _At least there was still a day before she had to meet her father._ Mataji thought frantically, pushing past Kenji to stand at the prow of the small boat they had used to get to Tequila Wolf. Kenji gave her an odd look, glanced up at the ship in the distance quizzically, and shook his head. Evidently not understanding.

After all, even from this distance it was clear that the ship ahead of them was a cruise ship. Likely full of rich patrons and squalling children.

The ship was large, had several prominent sails to hold its course steady, and consisted of a pink and yellow outline. But the most interesting part, the part that Mataji was convinced she saw flicker into view before the ship ahead realigned and moved the prow out of view, was a figurehead of a large corked wine bottle.

"Kenji… That's the Orbit." Mataji whispered, her voice sounding more horrified than happy despite her actual emotions.

"Wha?" Kenji scratched his head, still not getting it.

"The ORBIT! That's the… That's his ship! Sanji, that's where Sanji is!" Mataji hissed, clambering up onto the prow of their boat now and staring intensely. While the tell-tale figurehead was out of view now, the pink border of the ship was almost distinctive enough for Mataji to be certain.

"S'pose we _are_ in the right area for it. Yeh sure?" Kenji stroked his chin, already covered in a light stubble after not shaving for a handful of days.

"N… Yeah. I do. But want is a bit different to should." Mataji sighed, running her hands through her wiry mane of blonde hair with a disgruntled expression.

Kenji stared thoughtfully at the ship before them before plucking up Mataji's drawstring bag that she had left strewn next to him and rifling through it.

"What are you-" Mataji began before stopping, seeing the long dark wig that Kenji had pulled out.

"He ain't gonna recognise me after so long. This wig and… yeah, these tweezers should fix yer problem right up." Kenji dropped the wig and metal tweezers on the floor of their boat with a dull thud and a metallic twinkle.

"What?"

"Yer bratty brother. Put on yer disguise, we're goin' up. Ye mightn't even see 'im, but ye can get some info at least. An' some grub." Kenji added as if an afterthought, but Mataji saw through the larger pirate's intentions.

"Well I suppose that makes sense… Hand my little mirror over will you? If you steer I can fix these." Mataji gestured toward the swirls on her eyebrows blithely, confident that nothing would come of her plucking them even though they wouldn't have regrown by the time she saw her father. A brief explanation of being suspicious of navy officers being present at a pit stop on their way home would explain them away. After all, she had done the same before.

"Aye aye, Captain." Kenji grinned widely, clearly excited at the prospect of a decent meal. They hadn't eaten on Tequila Wolf after all, and though both slave and Master were more than capable of going days with minimal food it didn't mean either of them enjoyed it.

It didn't take long for her eyebrows to be plucked into submission, or her wig to be slotted into place. Mataji even changed out of her mission clothes into a light, airy, girly dress that swung about her knees with every puff of wind. It was much more typical of her age, and something an active member of the Germa 66 would view as inappropriate mission wear. There was very little chance that even should Sanji get a full look at her face that he would recognise her for who she was when he wasn't looking for her.

"Daughter or sister?" Mataji asked, looking up at Kenji now that her preparations were finished with her large blue eyes.

Kenji privately wondered for how long it would be up that this girl would be looking at him, as she seemed taller again than she had last time that this question had been asked.

"Sister." Kenji said firmly, knowing that the young girl could probably pass for fourteen by now. That would make him either a very young father or a brother with a slightly larger age gap. He could work the doting brother routine with a few of the women on board should the opportunity arise. The opportunity rarely ever arose nowadays, what with his needing to be near Mataji at almost every given moment.

It was difficult to disguise the bomb collar, but not impossible. A well-placed scarf did the job most of the time, and he could explain away his refusal to remove it with the excuse of bad scarring.

"Ahoy there! This is the cruise ship, the Orbit! Business?" A voice called from above as Mataji and Kenji pulled up next to the ship above.

"We're passin' by, hoping to grab some dinner off ye if possible 'fore we continue on. My little sister spotted yer figurehead and thought we should see if ye take business from passerbys." Kenji was trying hard to pronounce his words more clearly than usual, a failed attempt to sound less dangerous than he was.

"Um, we can pay! It's just… A friend of mine works here and I was hoping to try some of his cooking." Mataji batted her eyelids at the figure looking over the edge of the ship, looking demure and softening her voice far more than was probably necessary.

"Oh, are you friends with that Sanji boy? And of course it's no trouble, we have a few extra tables today and there's little chance of reservations when we are so far out to sea. Here, secure your boat to this." Mooring was dropped over the edge and Mataji could feel her heart grow lighter.

Sanji was up there somewhere.

A short conversation with a very kind manager later, and Mataji had managed to get the man to agree to allow Sanji to cook her meal in the kitchen under the guise of her wanting to see how much he had improved. A faked blush and flustered expression had convinced the manager that she would be far too embarrassed for Sanji to be informed of her presence on the ship.

"You have a very sweet little sister, to be looking out for her friend like that. Do I sense romance on the horizon?" The manager teased Kenji, acquiring a disgusted look from the older man.

"Doubt it." Kenji grunted and folded his large arms with a final tone in his voice.

Thankfully the manager took his expression to be the overprotective brother routine rather than disgust at incest and chuckled as he walked toward the kitchen with his orders for the chefs below.

Three women at a table nearby tittered at the display, whispering to each other behind ornamental fans.

"Well, you could be popular here if you wanted to." Mataji said slyly, leaning back in her chair and perfecting her posture as the situation demanded of it. She could play the part of somebody who fit into a restaurant as high class as this one if she needed to, even if Kenji couldn't.

"Couldn't be listenin' to that. Not normal to be tha' happy." Kenji glared at his partner over the menu that was clenched in his fists. He was completely out of his depth.

"This was your idea." Mataji stated mildly. "And that behaviour _is_ normal for women from a happy background."

"Didn't realise it'd be like this." Kenji responded glumly, poking at the complimentary breads disinterestedly. "Don't even know what I ordered, couldn't understand any'a the ingredients."

"You'll like it. Lots of sea food. Prawns, cod, salmon, and stuff." Mataji answered, picking up a piece of bread that Kenji hadn't pawed and buttering it lightly.

"An' what did ye order?" Kenji growled, looking curious now.

"Steak. I mean I trust that he improved but it's still pretty hard to mess up a good quality steak if you've had any training at all." Mataji said sheepishly, not enjoying explaining her lack of trust in her brother but still happy that she hadn't ordered a dish specialising in seafood.

"What? I didn't see that anywhere!" Kenji yelped, scanning the menu that he had kept to look through the drinks menu.

"That's what filet mignon is." Mataji explained with a grin, watching as a thunderous expression crossed her companion's face.

"I'd'a ordered that if I'd known!" He exclaimed, a thoroughly put out expression on his face.

"I wouldn't worry, the chefs won't allow bad food out through the door of their kitchen. Your meal looked a bit more difficult so I doubt that Sanji will have much to do with it. Maybe make the sauce or something. Yours will probably be better than mine." Mataji laughed as relief flooded Kenji's face and they eased into easy conversation until their food arrived.

"Here you are, my lady. Now, young Sanji was curious as to where I was bringing this meal of yours. Are you absolutely sure that he can't know of your presence here? He hasn't gotten any visitors in the two years he has been here, I'm sure he would be delighted." The manager asked kindly, smiling as Mataji pretended to flush again and shake her head determinedly.

The manager walked away, conceding to what Mataji wanted but seeming happy that there was someone, somewhere, that was interested in Sanji's life.

Mataji cut into the suspiciously tasty looking steak with trepidation, surprised when it cut away with ease to reveal a perfect reddish pink middle.

"You sure Sanji even made yours?" Kenji laughed through a mouthful of seafood at Mataji's perplexed face. She had almost been expecting something close to the poison that Sanji used to produce.

"Uh, he must have. Otherwise the manager wouldn't have asked me to meet with him." Mataji said slowly, putting a piece into her mouth and melting in delight. It was delicious. Again, not the most difficult dish in the world to do to a good standard, but this was beyond just good.

"This is why I've stayed working for my family for so long. He's gotten so much better in only two years." Mataji smiled softly, a sense of purpose filling her that had been dwindling recently. Sanji was being given the opportunity to live his life to the full.

"This is why I wanted to come on the ship. This's great." Kenji was wolfing down his food at a speed nobody else in the high-class restaurant was even coming close to matching. This didn't seem to deter one of the ladies at the table next to theirs, who was eying Kenji with even more interest now.

"How can you even tell? The food isn't even touching your tongue." Mataji teased, picking at her food delicately while wishing she could be doing the same as him. Mataji didn't particularly enjoy employing the table manners she had been taught, especially when she was hungry.

Sadly one of the two of them needed to appear to be high class or they never would have been allowed in the restaurant in the first place.

Mataji had powered through her meal as speedily as manners would allow, and Kenji was polishing off his third beer when the ship jolted with surprising force.

Mataji grabbed her water out of reflex, she had lived on a ship for too long to allow it to topple, and ignored the sound of glass shattering and cutlery dropping to the floor about the room.

"KYAAAAAAAA!"

"ARRRRGGGHH!"

Two screams echoed from outside on deck into the restaurant, and a brief silence followed before words came crawling after. Quietly at first, but then gained momentum until people inside the restaurant were screaming the same words despite the lack of proof.

"PIRATES! THERE'S A PIRATE SHIP!"

"Everyone please calm down!" That was a hopeful employee, whose words had no effect.

"Which pirate crew is it?" Mataji asked Kenji, who was craning his neck over the crowd.

"Hmph. It's got a weird duck with a hat as a figurehead." Kenji glanced down at Mataji with a furrowed brow, looking worried.

"Reckon that has to be the Cook Pirates. Dunno fer sure, but can't think'a another crew with a weird theme like that." Kenji responded, scratching his chin and taking another swig of his beer. He had long since finished his food.

"Prepare to board the ship!"

"Yes, Cap'n!"

Mataji heard the voices chorus over the winds that had begun howling outside now. One look at Kenji's face told her all she needed to about these pirates.

"They… aren't small fry then? I wonder why I haven't heard of them?" Mataji murmured, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin and standing up decisively while trying to isolate the clearest exit. She had to find Sanji.

"Well, the captain was pretty good. Got as far as the Grand Line an' sat pretty there fer a year, but his crew weren't as able as he was. He probably could'a made it further but he was supporting a crew that weren't able to keep up." Kenji replied curtly. And that, apparently, was that.

"THAT'S RED LEG ZEFF'S SHIP!"

"HE CAME BACK FROM THE GRAND LINE?!"

People were screaming and running, which made everything far more confusing than the situation needed to be. And Kenji, who was walking towards the source of all the confusion, was making things even worse.

"I need to find Sanji." Mataji vocalised in confusion, walking after Kenji anyway.

"An' he's thick as shit. Where ye think he's gonna be?" Kenji jerked his thumb towards the congregation outside.

Sanji definitely wouldn't know to stay away from dangerous pirates, having grown up in a family so much more dangerous than most pirates that the risk definitely wouldn't register with him.

And so, Mataji followed closely behind Kenji while allowing his larger body to part the crowd. Once they had exited the restaurant Mataji was forced to squint against the force of the building storm, but could still make out a clearing in the middle of the gathered crowd.

"Y-you must be the captain of these pirates, Red-Leg Zeff." The manager was facing a much larger pirate down with considerable bravery, although his face was covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Or rainwater. The sky was darkening considerably, the wind was picking up, and unholy amounts of rain was pouring from the sky.

"W-what do you need from us?" The manager's pointed black moustache was trembling as he spoke.

Mataji followed the manager's line of sight and eventually saw a tall blond man with angular features and a peg leg.

"Money." Zeff's expression didn't leave any room for doubt in the situation as he raised his arm slowly into the air. As soon as his hand had reached a high point above his head the pirates behind him leaped forward while crying out in exhilaration.

"Take all their valuables, down to the last beri!"

"Alright!"

The effect was instantaneous, the pirates began cutting through the mostly civilian customers and crew with ease and Mataji began to feel glad that they were stood at the back of the crowd. It allowed them to maintain a low profile.

"Can you see Sanji anywhere?" Mataji asked Kenji, relying on his superior height to spot her brother in the frantic crowd.

"Nah, raining too hard. Can't pick out much'a anything. Doesn't help that he's probably still a midget." Kenji admitted, his eyes squinting and scanning every head he could pick out.

Mataji and Kenji pressed forward into the crowd, staying just out of any of the pirates' way. Mataji wasn't so much worried about a confrontation with some of them as she was about drawing the attention of that captain. While his crew was small fry, he certainly wasn't and Mataji knew that she and Kenji wouldn't be able to take him.

"Cap'n, if we don't leave soon we'll get caught up in the storm!"

"I know." Zeff had been watching the sky intently, Mataji realised then. He wasn't going to get caught on a ship he had been looting, playing nice with his victims.

At least, that's what Mataji thought until Zeff took note of something in one of the bags that his crew had collected.

"Wait just a second, what's this?!" Zeff snarled, thrusting one of the sacks under the nose of one of his crew members.

"Aghhhh! Forgive me Captain Zeff, I was just a little hungr…" The man never got the chance to finish his sentence. The sole of Zeff's boot had met the man's solar plexus and sent him flying, and then crashing through the Orbit's mast.

Mataji didn't need to even turn her head to know that the man's skull had been cracked.

Zeff then stalked across the deck, grabbing the man by the head with his large meaty fist and brought his face close to his ear. Not that there was any need, as the words he spoke next were loud enough to carry across the deck that had been startled into total silence.

"Don't I always say not to ever lay even a finger, on our enemies' food?!" Zeff growled, seemingly not noticing the blood dripping down the man's face.

"Yes sir!"

Mataji watched as Zeff dropped the man to the floor with mild respect in her eyes. As bad as this guy was for stealing peoples' valuables, at least he wasn't going to leave them to starve to death on the open seas.

"Damn idiot!"

"What's with this kid?!"

"Oh no." Mataji whispered before turning slowly to clap her eyes on the one thing she was looking for and didn't want to see above deck. There was a small blonde boy wielding a kitchen knife in each hand on the opposite side of the deck facing down two fully armed pirates that absolutely dwarfed him.

"Hey kid, you shouldn't be swinging those things around. It's dangerous."

"Look, I'm bleeding. I might be seriously wounded."

The two pirates sniggered, and Mataji could only just hear them above the clamour that had started up again.

"Shut up! Like I'm just going to stand there and let you kill me!" Sanji cried, swinging the knives wildly as if he had never had the sword training that Jajji had definitely forced each of her siblings to undergo.

Two years of no training had not had a positive effect on Sanji's coordination. And they were mere meters from where Zeff was standing.

"Sanji, no! Don't fight back!"

"Stop it kid, don't provoke them any further!"

"Do something about him, he's one of your cooks, right?!"

"Sanji stop!"

Mataji was only slightly relieved by the uprising of voices calling for Sanji's safety.

"Kenji, I can't see properly, can you…." Mataji trailed off, eyes wide with the realisation that she wouldn't be able to make it in time.

"I'll try." Kenji grunted and began elbowing people out of the way. Mataji followed close behind once again, with little faith that anything would come of it.

"If the kid wants to die so badly, then kill him already and be done with it!" Zeff snapped, and any respect that had been growing for him withered away.

"NO!" Mataji shrieked wildly, grabbing the attention of most on their side of the deck. This, ironically, did not make it any easier to move through the crowd who were now staring at Kenji and Mataji plow their way through them.

"It's not like I want to die, but you pirates are gonna kill us all anyways! So I'll kill you first before you can kill me!" Sanji cried out, knives still swinging crazily.

Zeff took three long, uneven strides towards Sanji and drove a kick into his ribs.

"SANJI!" Mataji screamed, assuming that Zeff had kicked her brother with the same power that he had his crew earlier. Mataji stopped caring about who she was hurting and overtook Kenji and began barrelling through the crowd.

"I'm gonna… Find the All Blue someday." The words were croaked out and stopped Mataji mid-push for a split second when the sight of her brother with his teeth clamped around Zeff's leg.

Zeff kicked the boy back again as his crew taunted Sanji.

"AHAHAHAHA! He said he's gonna find the All Blue! That's quite the dream!"

"Go ahead, Captain! Tell him that a place like that doesn't even exist in the Grand Line!"

Mataji heard some of the Orbit's cooks groaning, wondering why Sanji would choose now of all times to harp on about the All Blue.

"There's no way that I'm gonna be killed by pirates like you in a place like this!" Sanji cried out from his position on the floor.

"Sanji, stop it!" Mataji screamed, pushing a particularly fat man out of her way while ducking under a swinging cutlass.

Sanji seemed to start for a second, looking around wildly for the source of the voice as the wind howled even louder above their heads.

"Captain, we have to pull back right away! The storm's coming much bigger than we thought! " A Cook Pirate shouted, clamping his hands over his own ears as they did so to protect them from the wind. The boat was rocking dangerously.

"Sanji! Over here!" Mataji cried, finally breaking through the crowd into the clearing where Sanji was lying on the floor.

"Alright, load up all of the loot back to our boat! Zeff cried, but Mataji wasn't paying any attention to him. Because just as Zeff shouted, Sanji clapped eyes on Mataji who was making her way towards him, head slightly bowed, against gale force winds. It had little to do with strength at this point and all to do with weight. Despite her height, and due to her young age, she had yet to fill out. This meant that she was much lighter than most of the other passengers and was counting herself lucky that her feet were even staying on deck so far.

Mataji could see the confusion on his face and remembered that she was still wearing her 'disguise'. She opened her mouth to shout across to Sanji that everything would be fine, she would look after him, he'd be a chef, he'd find the All Blue, anything, but then her life ended.

Or, what she saw as her life ended.

Because a monstrous wave, much higher than the edge of the ship, burst over the side and enveloped her brother.

"SANJIIIIII!" Mataji shrieked, adrenaline propelling herself forward much faster than she had managed before against such strong winds.

The wave receded before she reached the edge of the deck, and Mataji could see that her brother had been dragged overboard.

"Captain, what?"

Mataji only vaguely registered that Zeff had dove overboard mere seconds before she did the same herself.

Except, it what Mataji did wasn't quite the same. Zeff had a much larger body mass, and so Zeff was much more successful in achieving a direct dive. As soon as Mataji launched herself airborne, a fierce gust of wind caught narrow frame and sent her several meters shy of where she had been aiming, and slammed her form against the side of the Orbit with force.

The gust pinned her there for a split second before she began to slip downwards, and as she did a drop of icy fear crept into her chest. A wave, much larger than the one that had taken Sanji, the height of three Orbits, was crashing towards the two boats that were side by side.

With Mataji pinned between the two of them.

Mataji hit the water as the wave hit, the shock of the icy water causing her to gulp in seawater for a moment. Just a moment. She had been trained for every kind of natural disaster after all, especially the eventuality of being thrown overboard on the high seas. Jajji had trained her body until she could control most natural reflexes, such as the one to gasp in response to cold water shock.

Mataji could barely tell up from down as she was tossed in the current, but took three hopeful strokes in the direction that she hoped was down before the pain hit.

And suddenly, all training she had endured was pointless. The air was forced from her lungs as she screamed in agony and water rushed in.

Her leg. Her leg. Her leg. Her leg. Her leg. Her leg. Her leg. Her leg. Her leg. HER LEG!

Mataji thrashed viciously, trying to tug her left leg free from the crushing agony that was enveloping it. The pain was everywhere from her knee down, and so intense that she couldn't identify one particular area that hurt the most.

It felt like something was splintering, cracking, tearing, but she kept pulling anyway. The rushing of water into her lungs and the subsequent spinning of her head was helping to distract from the pain.

And for a split second, with the flow of the tide, the two ships separated. Mataji managed to pull her leg out by three inches and felt a mere second of elation as it came free before the crushing pressure returned and caused what little air that might have remained in her lungs to be pushed out. The ships had smashed back together again with the next wave, and shattered what might have remained of any of the bones in her leg.

She couldn't see. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't escape.

Until suddenly, the pain in her leg changed. It wasn't any less painful, not in the least, but it became sharper and more localised. Specifically, localised in the area directly above her knee.

But then, Mataji could breath.


End file.
